1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
6 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
10 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
11 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
12 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
13 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
14 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
16 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
17 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
19 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
20 reject file names invalid for that file system.
22 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
23 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
27 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
28 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
29 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
30 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
31 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
32 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
33 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
34 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
36 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
37 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
38 the same number of fields are output for each line.
40 ** Changes in behavior
42 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
43 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
44 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
47 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
51 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
52 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
53 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
56 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
60 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
61 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
63 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
64 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
66 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
67 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
69 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
70 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
71 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
72 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
74 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
75 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
77 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
78 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
79 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
81 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
83 ** Changes in behavior
85 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
86 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
87 to the number of available processors.
91 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
94 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
98 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
99 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
100 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
101 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
103 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
104 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
105 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
107 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
108 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
110 ** Changes in behavior
112 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
113 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
115 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
116 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
117 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
118 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
119 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
120 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
122 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
123 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
124 the same way as the others.
127 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
131 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
132 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
133 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
135 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
136 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
138 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
139 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
140 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
142 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
143 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
145 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
146 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
148 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
149 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
150 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
152 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
153 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
154 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
155 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
159 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
160 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
162 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
165 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
166 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
168 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
170 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
171 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
172 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
174 ** Changes in behavior
176 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
177 rather than its aliased target.
179 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
180 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
181 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
183 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
184 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
185 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
186 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
187 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
188 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
189 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
190 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
192 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
194 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
196 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
197 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
200 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
201 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
202 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
203 control like taskset for example.
205 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
207 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
208 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
209 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
210 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
211 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
212 includes %C when context information is available.
214 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
215 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
216 rather than a file system attribute.
218 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
219 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
220 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
221 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
223 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
224 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
225 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
227 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
228 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
229 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
232 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
236 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
237 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
239 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
241 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
242 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
244 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
245 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
246 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
247 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
249 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
250 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
251 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
255 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
256 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
258 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
259 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
260 duration after the initial signal was sent.
262 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
263 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
264 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
265 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
266 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
267 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
268 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
269 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
270 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
272 ** Changes in behavior
274 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
275 sequence when it would be a no-op.
277 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
278 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
281 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
285 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
286 of available processors, which may not have been the case
287 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
288 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
292 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
293 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
295 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
296 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
297 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
298 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
300 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
301 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
302 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
305 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
309 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
310 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
311 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
313 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
314 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
315 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
317 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
318 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
320 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
321 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
322 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
323 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
325 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
326 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
327 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
329 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
330 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
331 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
332 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
334 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
335 renamed-aside and then recreated.
336 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
338 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
339 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
340 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
341 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
343 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
344 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
345 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
347 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
348 processes will not intersperse their output.
349 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
352 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
356 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
357 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
359 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
360 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
362 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
363 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
364 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
365 the presence of the empty string argument.
366 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
368 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
369 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
370 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
371 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
373 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
374 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
376 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
377 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
378 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
380 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
381 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
382 and with a malicious user on the same system
383 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
384 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
387 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
391 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
392 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
393 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
395 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
396 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
397 offending directory and all "contents."
399 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
400 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
401 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
403 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
404 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
405 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
407 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
408 processes will not intersperse their output.
409 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
410 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
412 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
413 output the name of the file to stdout.
414 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
416 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
417 call fails with errno == EACCES.
418 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
420 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
421 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
424 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
425 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
426 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
428 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
429 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
430 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
431 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
432 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
433 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
435 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
436 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
437 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
438 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
440 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
441 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
443 ** Changes in behavior
445 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
446 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
447 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
448 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
449 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
451 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
452 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
453 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
454 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
456 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
458 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
459 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
460 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
461 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
462 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
466 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
470 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
471 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
473 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
474 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
476 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
477 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
478 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
480 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
481 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
484 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
488 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
489 when the source file doesn't have write access.
490 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
492 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
493 to accommodate leap seconds.
494 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
496 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
497 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
498 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
500 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
502 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
503 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
504 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
506 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
507 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
508 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
509 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
510 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
514 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
515 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
516 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
517 directory or a symlink to a directory.
519 ** Changes in behavior
521 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
522 environment variable is set.
524 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
525 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
526 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
530 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
531 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
532 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
533 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
535 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
536 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
537 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
538 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
542 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
543 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
544 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
546 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
547 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
548 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
549 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
550 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
551 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
554 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
555 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
558 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
562 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
563 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
564 and libraries tested at configure time.
565 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
567 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
568 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
570 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
571 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
573 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
574 printing a summary to stderr.
575 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
577 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
578 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
579 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
581 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
582 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
584 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
585 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
586 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
587 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
589 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
590 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
591 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
592 which is relatively unusual.
593 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
595 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
596 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
597 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
598 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
599 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
600 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
601 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
605 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
606 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
607 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
608 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
609 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
613 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
614 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
616 ** Changes in behavior
618 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
619 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
620 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
621 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
622 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
625 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
629 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
630 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
632 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
633 before data copying has started.
635 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
636 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
638 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
639 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
640 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
641 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
643 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
644 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
645 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
646 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
648 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
653 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
654 for its standard streams.
656 ** Changes in behavior
658 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
659 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
660 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
661 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
662 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
663 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
665 ** Deprecated options
667 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
668 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
672 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
674 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
675 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
678 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
680 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
681 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
683 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
684 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
687 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
691 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
692 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
693 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
694 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
696 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
697 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
698 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
699 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
700 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
705 make check: two tests have been corrected
709 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
710 inherited from gnulib.
713 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
717 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
718 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
719 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
720 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
722 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
723 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
725 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
727 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
728 systems without xattr support.
730 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
731 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
732 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
734 ** Changes in behavior
736 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
737 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
738 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
739 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
741 ** Improved robustness
743 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
744 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
745 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
746 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
747 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
748 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
749 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
750 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
751 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
755 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
756 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
758 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
759 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
760 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
761 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
762 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
765 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
769 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
770 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
771 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
775 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
776 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
777 data was read, or on process exit.
778 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
780 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
781 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
782 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
783 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
785 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
786 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
787 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
788 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
790 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
791 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
793 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
794 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
796 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
797 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
798 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
800 ** Changes in behavior
802 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
803 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
804 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
806 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
807 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
809 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
810 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
811 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
814 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
818 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
820 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
821 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
822 install: Never copies xattrs
824 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
825 from overwriting any existing destination file
827 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
828 mode where this feature is available.
830 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
831 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
832 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
833 do not modify the destination at all.
835 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
837 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
841 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
842 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
844 cp uses much less memory in some situations
846 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
847 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
849 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
850 processing the first file name
852 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
853 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
854 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
855 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
857 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
858 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
860 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
861 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
864 ** Changes in behavior
866 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
867 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
869 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
870 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
871 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
873 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
874 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
876 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
878 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
879 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
880 is still marked with a '+'.
883 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
887 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
888 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
892 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
893 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
894 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
895 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
896 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
897 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
899 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
900 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
902 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
903 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
905 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
907 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
908 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
909 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
911 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
912 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
914 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
915 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
916 used to factor large numbers.
918 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
921 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
923 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
925 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
926 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
928 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
929 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
930 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
931 maximum command-line (argv) length.
933 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
934 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
935 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
937 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
938 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
942 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
944 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
945 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
947 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
948 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
950 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
952 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
953 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
957 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
958 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
959 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
961 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
963 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
964 no matter how many files are in a given directory
966 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
967 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
968 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
970 ** Changes in behavior
972 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
973 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
976 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
980 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
982 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
983 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
984 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
986 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
987 with no USERNAME argument.
989 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
990 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
991 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
993 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
994 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
995 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
996 number of fields for some inputs.
998 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
999 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1001 ** Changes in behavior
1003 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1004 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1007 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1011 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1013 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1014 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1015 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1016 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1018 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1019 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1021 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1022 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1024 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1025 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1027 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1028 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1029 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1030 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1032 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1033 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1034 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1035 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1036 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1037 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1039 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1040 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1042 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1043 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1044 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1046 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1047 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1049 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1050 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1052 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1053 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1054 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1055 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1057 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1058 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1060 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1061 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1063 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1064 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1065 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1069 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1070 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1072 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1073 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1074 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1075 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1079 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1080 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1082 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1084 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1088 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1089 which have negative errno values.
1093 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1097 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1101 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1102 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1105 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1109 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1110 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1111 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1113 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1114 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1115 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1116 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1120 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1121 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1122 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1123 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1126 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1130 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1132 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1133 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1134 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1137 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1141 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1142 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1144 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1146 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1148 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1150 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1154 ** Changes in behavior
1156 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1157 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1159 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1160 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1162 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1163 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1164 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1168 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1169 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1170 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1171 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1172 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1173 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1174 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1175 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1176 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1177 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1178 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1180 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1181 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1182 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1185 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1188 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1189 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1190 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1192 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1193 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1194 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1197 ** New build options
1199 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1200 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1201 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1202 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1204 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1205 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1206 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1207 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1208 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1209 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1210 of "make check" fail.
1212 ** Remove deprecated options
1214 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1215 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1216 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1217 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1218 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1220 ** Improved robustness
1222 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1223 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1224 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1225 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1226 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1227 loss of the contents of a/f.
1229 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1230 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1234 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1235 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1236 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1238 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1239 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1240 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1241 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1243 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1244 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1245 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1246 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1247 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1248 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1249 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1250 destination is a symlink.
1252 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1254 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1255 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1257 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1258 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1260 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1262 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1263 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1265 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1266 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1268 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1271 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1272 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1274 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1275 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1277 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1278 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1279 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1280 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1282 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1283 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1284 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1286 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1287 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1288 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1290 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1291 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1292 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1293 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1295 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1296 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1297 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1299 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1300 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1302 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1303 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1305 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1307 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1308 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1309 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1311 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1312 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1314 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1315 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1317 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1318 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1320 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1321 [present in the original version]
1324 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1328 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1330 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1331 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1332 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1334 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1335 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1337 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1341 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1342 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1344 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1345 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1347 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1348 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1350 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1351 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1352 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1353 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1354 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1355 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1357 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1358 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1361 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1362 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1364 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1367 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1368 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1369 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1371 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1372 directory is unreadable.
1374 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1375 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1376 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1378 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1379 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1380 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1381 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1382 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1385 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1386 Before it would print nothing.
1388 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1390 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1391 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1392 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1393 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1394 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1395 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1396 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1397 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1399 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1403 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1404 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1405 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1407 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1408 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1409 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1410 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1413 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1417 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1418 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1419 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1420 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1421 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1422 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1423 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1425 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1426 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1427 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1428 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1429 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1430 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1431 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1432 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1434 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1435 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1436 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1439 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1443 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1444 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1446 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1447 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1448 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1450 ** Improved robustness
1452 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1453 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1454 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1457 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1461 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1462 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1463 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1464 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1465 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1467 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1471 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1474 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1478 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1479 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1480 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1481 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1483 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1484 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1486 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1487 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1488 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1491 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1493 ** Improved robustness
1495 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1496 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1498 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1499 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1500 or NFS-mounted partition.
1502 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1503 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1507 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1508 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1509 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1510 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1511 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1512 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1514 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1515 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1517 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1518 or neglect to report file removal.
1520 For the "groups" command:
1522 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1523 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1525 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1527 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1529 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1533 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1534 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1537 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1539 ** Changes in behavior
1541 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1542 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1543 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1544 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1546 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1547 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1548 a final `./' or `../' component.
1550 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1551 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1552 this only for pipes.
1554 ** Infrastructure changes
1556 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1557 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1558 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1559 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1563 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1564 name is "." or "..".
1566 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1567 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1568 dirent.d_type support.
1570 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1571 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1573 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1574 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1575 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1576 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1579 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1581 ** Changes in behavior
1583 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1587 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1588 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1592 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1593 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1594 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1596 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1597 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1599 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1600 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1602 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1604 ** Improved robustness
1606 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1607 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1608 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1610 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1611 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1614 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1615 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1617 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1618 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1620 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1621 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1623 ** Changes in behavior
1625 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1626 where the two are distinct.
1628 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1629 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1630 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1631 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1632 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1633 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1634 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1635 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1636 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1637 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1638 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1639 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1640 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1641 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1642 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1643 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1644 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1646 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1647 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1648 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1650 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1651 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1652 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1653 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1656 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1657 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1661 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1662 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1663 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1664 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1666 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1667 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1668 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1670 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1671 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1672 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1673 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1674 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1677 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1678 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1680 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1681 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1682 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1683 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1685 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1686 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1687 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1689 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1690 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1691 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1692 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1694 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1695 and sticky) with the -m option.
1697 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1698 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1699 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1700 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1701 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1703 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1704 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1706 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1710 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1711 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1712 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1713 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1715 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1717 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1719 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1720 silently ignoring one of them.
1722 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1723 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1724 containing this change was 5.92.
1726 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1727 automatically newline terminated.
1729 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1730 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1731 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1732 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1735 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1736 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1737 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1740 ** Scheduled for removal
1742 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1743 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1745 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1746 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1747 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1748 command to unlink a directory.
1750 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1751 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1752 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1753 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1757 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1758 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1759 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1760 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1761 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1762 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1766 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1767 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1769 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1771 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1772 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1773 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1775 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1776 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1779 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1780 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1782 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1783 list directories before files.
1785 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1786 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1787 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1788 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1791 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1793 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1795 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1796 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1797 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1799 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1800 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1804 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1805 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1806 usually printing nothing.
1808 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1810 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1811 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1812 them with hard-linked directories.
1814 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1815 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1816 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1818 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1819 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1820 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1822 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1825 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1826 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1828 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1829 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1831 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1832 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1834 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1835 all command-line arguments.
1837 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1839 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1841 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1842 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1844 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1846 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1847 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1848 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1849 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1850 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1852 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1853 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1855 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1856 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1857 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1858 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1860 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1862 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1866 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1867 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1869 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1870 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1872 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1873 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1875 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1876 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1878 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1879 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1881 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1883 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1884 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1885 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1888 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1890 ** Build-related bug fixes
1892 installing .mo files would fail
1895 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1899 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1901 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1904 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1908 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1909 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1913 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1915 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1916 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1918 ** Deprecated options
1920 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1921 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1923 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1927 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1929 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1930 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1931 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1932 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1934 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1937 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1943 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1948 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1950 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1952 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1953 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1954 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1956 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1957 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1958 problematic usages. These include:
1960 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1961 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1962 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1963 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1964 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1965 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1966 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1967 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1968 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1970 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1971 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1973 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1974 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1975 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1976 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1978 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1979 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1980 between binary and text files.
1982 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1986 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1990 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1991 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1993 head tac tail tee tr
1994 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1996 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1997 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1999 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2000 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2001 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2003 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2005 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2007 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2008 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2009 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2013 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2015 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2016 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2018 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2019 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2020 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2024 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2025 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2029 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2030 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2031 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2035 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2036 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2040 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2042 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2044 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2048 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2049 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2050 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2052 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2053 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2054 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2055 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2056 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2058 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2062 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2063 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2064 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2066 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2068 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2069 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2070 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2071 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2073 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2075 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2076 rather than silently wrapping around.
2078 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2079 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2081 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2082 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2084 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2085 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2086 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2087 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2089 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2091 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2093 ** Improved robustness
2095 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2096 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2097 no matter how large the result.
2099 ** Improved portability
2101 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2102 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2104 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2106 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2107 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2108 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2110 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2111 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2115 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2116 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2118 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2120 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2121 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2122 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2123 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2125 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2126 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2128 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2129 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2130 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2132 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2134 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2135 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2137 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2138 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2140 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2142 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2143 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2145 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2146 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2148 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2149 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2150 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2152 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2154 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2156 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2160 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2162 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2163 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2164 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2166 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2167 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2169 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2170 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2171 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2173 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2174 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2176 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2177 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2178 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2179 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2181 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2182 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2184 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2185 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2186 the file system does not support it.
2188 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2190 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2191 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2193 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2195 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2196 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2198 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2199 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2200 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2201 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2203 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2204 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2207 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2208 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2209 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2210 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2212 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2213 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2214 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2215 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2217 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2218 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2220 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2222 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2223 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2224 reporting incorrect results.
2228 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2229 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2231 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2234 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2236 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2237 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2239 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2240 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2242 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2245 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2246 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2247 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2248 the file name does not look like a page range.
2250 printf has several changes:
2252 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2253 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2255 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2256 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2257 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2259 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2260 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2263 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2264 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2266 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2267 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2269 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2271 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2272 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2274 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2276 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2278 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2279 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2280 when first encountering the directory.
2284 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2285 output; POSIX requires this.
2287 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2288 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2290 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2292 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2293 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2295 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2296 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2298 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2299 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2300 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2301 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2302 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2303 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2304 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2306 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2307 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2308 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2310 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2311 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2313 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2315 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2317 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2318 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2319 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2320 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2322 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2326 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2327 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2328 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2329 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2330 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2332 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2333 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2334 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2336 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2337 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2339 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2340 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2342 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2343 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2344 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2345 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2346 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2348 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2349 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2351 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2352 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2354 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2356 nocreat do not create the output file
2357 excl fail if the output file already exists
2358 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2359 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2361 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2363 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2364 direct use direct I/O for data
2365 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2366 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2367 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2368 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2369 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2371 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2373 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2374 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2377 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2378 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2379 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2380 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2381 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2382 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2384 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2385 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2387 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2390 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2392 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2394 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2395 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2397 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2398 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2399 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2401 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2402 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2403 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2405 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2407 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2408 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2410 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2411 for compatibility with bash.
2413 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2415 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2416 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2417 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2418 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2420 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2421 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2423 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2424 ls supports TABSIZE.
2425 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2426 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2427 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2429 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2432 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2434 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2435 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2436 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2437 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2438 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2439 an offset, not as a file name.
2441 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2442 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2444 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2445 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2447 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2448 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2450 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2451 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2452 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2454 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2455 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2457 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2458 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2462 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2464 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2466 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2470 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2471 or more arguments between partitions.
2473 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2474 holes in the destination.
2476 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2477 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2478 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2479 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2480 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2481 terminates immediately.
2483 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2485 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2487 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2488 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2489 not the empty string.
2491 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2492 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2496 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2497 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2498 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2501 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2508 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2512 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2513 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2515 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2516 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2518 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2519 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2520 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2523 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2527 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2528 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2530 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2531 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2533 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2534 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2535 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2537 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2539 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2542 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2544 ** Configuration option
2546 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2547 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2551 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2552 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2556 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2557 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2558 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2561 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2562 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2563 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2564 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2565 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2566 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2567 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2570 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2574 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2575 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2576 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2578 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2579 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2581 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2583 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2584 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2585 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2586 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2588 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2590 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2591 not just the ones that reference directories
2593 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2594 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2596 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2597 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2598 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2600 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2601 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2602 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2603 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2604 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2605 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2607 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2612 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2613 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2615 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2617 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2619 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2621 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2622 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2624 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2625 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2627 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2629 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2633 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2635 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2637 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2638 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2639 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2640 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2641 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2643 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2644 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2646 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2647 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2649 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2650 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2652 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2653 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2654 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2658 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2659 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2660 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2661 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2662 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2663 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2664 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2665 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2666 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2667 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2668 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2669 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2670 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2671 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2673 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2675 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2676 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2678 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2680 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2682 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2683 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2685 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2687 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2688 without a trailing newline.
2690 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2691 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2693 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2696 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2700 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2702 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2704 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2705 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2706 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2707 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2709 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2711 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2712 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2713 be printed without leading spaces.
2715 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2716 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2721 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2722 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2723 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2725 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2727 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2728 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2730 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2731 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2733 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2734 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2736 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2738 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2740 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2742 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2743 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2745 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2747 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2749 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2750 byte offsets are specified.
2753 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2756 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2759 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2760 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2761 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2762 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2763 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2764 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2765 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2766 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2767 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2768 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2769 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2770 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2771 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2772 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2773 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2774 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2775 directory where M has write access.
2776 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2777 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2778 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2781 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2782 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2783 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2784 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2785 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2786 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2787 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2788 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2789 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2790 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2791 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2792 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2793 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2794 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2795 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2796 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2797 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2798 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2799 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2800 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2801 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2802 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2803 appeared one additional time.
2805 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2806 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2807 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2808 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2811 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2812 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2813 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2814 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2815 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2816 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2817 if there were more than 338.
2819 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2820 - false --help now exits nonzero
2823 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2824 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2825 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2826 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2829 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2830 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2831 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2832 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2833 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2836 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2837 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2838 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2839 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2840 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2841 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2842 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2845 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2846 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2847 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2848 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2849 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2850 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2852 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2853 under certain unusual conditions
2854 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2855 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2858 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2859 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2860 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2861 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2862 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2863 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2864 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2865 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2866 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2867 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2868 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2869 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2870 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2871 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2872 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2873 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2876 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2877 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2880 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2881 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2882 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2883 involving hard-linked directories
2884 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2885 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2886 character-special and block files
2889 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2890 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2891 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2892 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2893 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2894 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2895 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2896 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2897 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2899 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2900 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2901 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2902 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2903 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2904 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2905 specified on the command line.
2906 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2907 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2908 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2909 the first file untouched.
2910 * readlink: new program
2911 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2912 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2913 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2914 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2915 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2916 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2919 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2920 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2921 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2922 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2923 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2924 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2925 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2926 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2927 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2928 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2929 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2930 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2932 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2933 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2934 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2936 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2937 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2938 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2939 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2940 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2941 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2942 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2943 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2946 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2947 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2950 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2951 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2952 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2953 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2954 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2955 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2956 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2959 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2960 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2962 ========================================================================
2963 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2964 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2967 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2969 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2970 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2971 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2972 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2973 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2974 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2975 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2976 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2977 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2978 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2979 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2980 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2982 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2983 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2984 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2985 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2987 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2990 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2992 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2993 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2994 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2995 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2996 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2997 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2998 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3001 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3002 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3003 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3004 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3005 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
3006 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3007 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
3008 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3009 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3010 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3011 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
3012 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
3013 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3014 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3015 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3016 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3018 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3019 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3021 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3022 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3023 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3024 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3025 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3026 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3028 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3029 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3030 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3031 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3032 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3033 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3034 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3036 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3037 the source files in the following example:
3038 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3039 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3040 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3041 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3042 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3043 links between source files with --preserve=links
3044 * cp accepts new options:
3045 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3046 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3047 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3048 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3049 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3050 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3051 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3052 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
3053 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3055 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3056 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3057 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3058 even though it's older than dest.
3059 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3060 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3061 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3062 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3063 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3065 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3066 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3067 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3068 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3069 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3070 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3071 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3073 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3074 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3075 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3077 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3078 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3079 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3080 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3081 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3082 This is the default.
3084 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3085 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3086 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3087 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3088 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3090 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3093 ========================================================================
3094 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3095 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3098 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3099 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3101 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3102 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3103 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3104 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3105 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3107 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3108 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3109 that specifies a non-directory
3112 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3113 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3114 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3115 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3116 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3117 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3118 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3119 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3120 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3121 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3122 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3123 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3124 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3125 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3126 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3127 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3128 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3129 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3130 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3131 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3132 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3133 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3134 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3135 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3137 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3138 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3139 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3141 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3143 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3144 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3146 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3147 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3148 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3149 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3150 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3152 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3153 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3154 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3155 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3156 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3158 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3160 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3161 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3162 * still more portability fixes
3163 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3164 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3166 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3168 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3170 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3172 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3173 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3174 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3175 there is any time remaining
3176 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3178 ========================================================================
3179 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3180 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3182 This package began as the union of the following:
3183 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3185 ========================================================================
3187 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3189 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3190 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3191 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3192 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3193 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3194 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.