1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
6 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
10 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
11 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
12 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
14 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
15 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
17 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
18 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
19 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
21 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
22 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
24 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
25 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
27 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
28 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
29 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
31 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
32 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
33 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
34 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
38 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
39 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
41 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
44 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
45 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
47 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
49 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
50 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
51 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
53 ** Changes in behavior
55 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
56 rather than its aliased target.
58 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
59 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
60 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
62 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
63 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
64 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
65 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
66 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
67 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
68 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
69 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
71 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
73 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
75 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
76 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
79 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
80 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
81 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
82 control like taskset for example.
84 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
86 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
87 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
88 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
89 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
90 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
91 includes %C when context information is available.
93 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
94 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
95 rather than a file system attribute.
97 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
98 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
99 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
100 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
102 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
103 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
104 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
106 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
107 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
108 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
111 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
115 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
116 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
118 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
120 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
121 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
123 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
124 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
125 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
126 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
128 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
129 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
130 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
134 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
135 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
137 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
138 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
139 duration after the initial signal was sent.
141 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
142 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
143 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
144 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
145 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
146 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
147 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
148 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
149 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
151 ** Changes in behavior
153 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
154 sequence when it would be a no-op.
156 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
157 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
160 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
164 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
165 of available processors, which may not have been the case
166 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
167 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
171 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
172 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
174 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
175 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
176 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
177 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
179 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
180 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
181 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
184 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
188 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
189 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
190 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
192 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
193 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
194 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
196 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
197 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
199 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
200 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
201 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
202 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
204 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
205 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
206 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
208 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
209 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
210 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
211 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
213 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
214 renamed-aside and then recreated.
215 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
217 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
218 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
219 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
220 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
222 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
223 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
224 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
226 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
227 processes will not intersperse their output.
228 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
231 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
235 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
236 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
238 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
239 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
241 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
242 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
243 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
244 the presence of the empty string argument.
245 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
247 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
248 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
249 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
250 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
252 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
253 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
255 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
256 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
257 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
259 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
260 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
261 and with a malicious user on the same system
262 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
263 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
266 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
270 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
271 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
272 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
274 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
275 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
276 offending directory and all "contents."
278 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
279 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
280 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
282 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
283 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
284 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
286 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
287 processes will not intersperse their output.
288 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
289 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
291 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
292 output the name of the file to stdout.
293 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
295 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
296 call fails with errno == EACCES.
297 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
299 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
300 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
303 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
304 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
305 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
307 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
308 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
309 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
310 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
311 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
312 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
314 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
315 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
316 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
317 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
319 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
320 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
322 ** Changes in behavior
324 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
325 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
326 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
327 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
328 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
330 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
331 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
332 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
333 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
335 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
337 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
338 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
339 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
340 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
341 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
345 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
349 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
350 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
352 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
353 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
355 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
356 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
357 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
359 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
360 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
363 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
367 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
368 when the source file doesn't have write access.
369 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
371 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
372 to accommodate leap seconds.
373 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
375 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
376 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
377 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
379 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
381 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
382 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
383 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
385 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
386 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
387 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
388 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
389 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
393 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
394 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
395 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
396 directory or a symlink to a directory.
398 ** Changes in behavior
400 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
401 environment variable is set.
403 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
404 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
405 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
409 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
410 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
411 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
412 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
414 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
415 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
416 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
417 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
421 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
422 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
423 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
425 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
426 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
427 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
428 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
429 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
430 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
433 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
434 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
437 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
441 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
442 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
443 and libraries tested at configure time.
444 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
446 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
447 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
449 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
450 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
452 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
453 printing a summary to stderr.
454 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
456 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
457 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
458 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
460 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
461 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
463 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
464 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
465 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
466 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
468 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
469 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
470 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
471 which is relatively unusual.
472 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
474 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
475 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
476 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
477 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
478 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
479 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
480 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
484 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
485 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
486 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
487 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
488 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
492 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
493 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
495 ** Changes in behavior
497 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
498 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
499 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
500 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
501 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
504 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
508 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
509 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
511 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
512 before data copying has started.
514 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
515 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
517 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
518 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
519 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
520 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
522 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
523 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
524 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
525 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
527 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
532 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
533 for its standard streams.
535 ** Changes in behavior
537 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
538 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
539 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
540 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
541 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
542 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
544 ** Deprecated options
546 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
547 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
551 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
553 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
554 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
557 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
559 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
560 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
562 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
563 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
566 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
570 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
571 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
572 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
573 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
575 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
576 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
577 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
578 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
579 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
584 make check: two tests have been corrected
588 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
589 inherited from gnulib.
592 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
596 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
597 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
598 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
599 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
601 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
602 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
604 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
606 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
607 systems without xattr support.
609 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
610 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
611 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
613 ** Changes in behavior
615 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
616 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
617 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
618 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
620 ** Improved robustness
622 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
623 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
624 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
625 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
626 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
627 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
628 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
629 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
630 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
634 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
635 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
637 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
638 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
639 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
640 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
641 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
644 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
648 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
649 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
650 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
654 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
655 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
656 data was read, or on process exit.
657 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
659 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
660 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
661 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
662 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
664 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
665 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
666 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
667 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
669 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
670 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
672 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
673 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
675 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
676 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
677 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
679 ** Changes in behavior
681 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
682 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
683 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
685 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
686 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
688 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
689 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
690 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
693 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
697 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
699 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
700 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
701 install: Never copies xattrs
703 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
704 from overwriting any existing destination file
706 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
707 mode where this feature is available.
709 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
710 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
711 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
712 do not modify the destination at all.
714 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
716 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
720 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
721 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
723 cp uses much less memory in some situations
725 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
726 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
728 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
729 processing the first file name
731 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
732 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
733 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
734 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
736 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
737 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
739 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
740 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
743 ** Changes in behavior
745 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
746 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
748 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
749 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
750 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
752 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
753 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
755 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
757 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
758 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
759 is still marked with a '+'.
762 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
766 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
767 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
771 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
772 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
773 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
774 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
775 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
776 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
778 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
779 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
781 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
782 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
784 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
786 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
787 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
788 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
790 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
791 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
793 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
794 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
795 used to factor large numbers.
797 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
800 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
802 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
804 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
805 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
807 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
808 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
809 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
810 maximum command-line (argv) length.
812 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
813 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
814 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
816 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
817 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
821 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
823 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
824 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
826 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
827 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
829 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
831 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
832 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
836 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
837 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
838 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
840 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
842 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
843 no matter how many files are in a given directory
845 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
846 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
847 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
849 ** Changes in behavior
851 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
852 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
855 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
859 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
861 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
862 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
863 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
865 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
866 with no USERNAME argument.
868 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
869 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
870 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
872 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
873 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
874 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
875 number of fields for some inputs.
877 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
878 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
880 ** Changes in behavior
882 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
883 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
886 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
890 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
892 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
893 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
894 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
895 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
897 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
898 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
900 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
901 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
903 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
904 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
906 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
907 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
908 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
909 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
911 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
912 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
913 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
914 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
915 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
916 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
918 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
919 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
921 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
922 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
923 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
925 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
926 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
928 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
929 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
931 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
932 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
933 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
934 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
936 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
937 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
939 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
940 in more cases when a directory is empty.
942 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
943 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
944 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
948 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
949 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
951 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
952 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
953 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
954 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
958 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
959 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
961 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
963 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
967 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
968 which have negative errno values.
972 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
976 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
980 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
981 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
984 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
988 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
989 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
990 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
992 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
993 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
994 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
995 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
999 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1000 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1001 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1002 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1005 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1009 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1011 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1012 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1013 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1016 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1020 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1021 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1023 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1025 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1027 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1029 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1033 ** Changes in behavior
1035 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1036 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1038 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1039 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1041 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1042 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1043 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1047 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1048 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1049 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1050 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1051 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1052 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1053 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1054 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1055 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1056 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1057 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1059 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1060 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1061 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1064 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1067 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1068 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1069 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1071 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1072 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1073 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1076 ** New build options
1078 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1079 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1080 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1081 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1083 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1084 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1085 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1086 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1087 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1088 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1089 of "make check" fail.
1091 ** Remove deprecated options
1093 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1094 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1095 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1096 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1097 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1099 ** Improved robustness
1101 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1102 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1103 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1104 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1105 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1106 loss of the contents of a/f.
1108 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1109 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1113 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1114 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1115 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1117 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1118 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1119 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1120 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1122 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1123 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1124 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1125 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1126 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1127 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1128 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1129 destination is a symlink.
1131 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1133 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1134 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1136 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1137 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1139 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1141 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1142 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1144 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1145 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1147 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1150 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1151 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1153 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1154 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1156 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1157 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1158 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1159 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1161 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1162 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1163 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1165 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1166 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1167 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1169 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1170 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1171 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1172 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1174 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1175 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1176 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1178 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1179 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1181 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1182 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1184 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1186 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1187 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1188 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1190 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1191 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1193 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1194 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1196 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1197 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1199 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1200 [present in the original version]
1203 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1207 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1209 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1210 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1211 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1213 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1214 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1216 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1220 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1221 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1223 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1224 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1226 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1227 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1229 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1230 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1231 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1232 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1233 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1234 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1236 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1237 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1240 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1241 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1243 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1246 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1247 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1248 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1250 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1251 directory is unreadable.
1253 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1254 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1255 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1257 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1258 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1259 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1260 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1261 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1264 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1265 Before it would print nothing.
1267 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1269 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1270 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1271 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1272 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1273 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1274 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1275 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1276 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1278 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1282 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1283 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1284 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1286 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1287 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1288 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1289 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1292 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1296 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1297 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1298 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1299 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1300 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1301 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1302 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1304 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1305 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1306 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1307 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1308 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1309 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1310 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1311 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1313 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1314 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1315 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1318 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1322 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1323 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1325 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1326 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1327 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1329 ** Improved robustness
1331 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1332 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1333 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1336 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1340 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1341 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1342 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1343 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1344 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1346 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1350 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1353 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1357 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1358 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1359 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1360 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1362 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1363 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1365 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1366 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1367 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1370 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1372 ** Improved robustness
1374 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1375 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1377 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1378 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1379 or NFS-mounted partition.
1381 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1382 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1386 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1387 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1388 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1389 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1390 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1391 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1393 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1394 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1396 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1397 or neglect to report file removal.
1399 For the "groups" command:
1401 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1402 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1404 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1406 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1408 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1412 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1413 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1416 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1418 ** Changes in behavior
1420 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1421 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1422 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1423 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1425 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1426 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1427 a final `./' or `../' component.
1429 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1430 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1431 this only for pipes.
1433 ** Infrastructure changes
1435 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1436 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1437 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1438 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1442 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1443 name is "." or "..".
1445 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1446 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1447 dirent.d_type support.
1449 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1450 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1452 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1453 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1454 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1455 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1458 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1460 ** Changes in behavior
1462 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1466 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1467 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1471 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1472 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1473 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1475 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1476 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1478 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1479 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1481 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1483 ** Improved robustness
1485 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1486 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1487 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1489 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1490 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1493 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1494 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1496 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1497 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1499 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1500 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1502 ** Changes in behavior
1504 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1505 where the two are distinct.
1507 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1508 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1509 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1510 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1511 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1512 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1513 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1514 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1515 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1516 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1517 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1518 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1519 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1520 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1521 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1522 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1523 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1525 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1526 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1527 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1529 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1530 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1531 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1532 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1535 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1536 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1540 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1541 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1542 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1543 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1545 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1546 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1547 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1549 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1550 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1551 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1552 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1553 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1556 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1557 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1559 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1560 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1561 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1562 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1564 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1565 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1566 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1568 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1569 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1570 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1571 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1573 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1574 and sticky) with the -m option.
1576 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1577 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1578 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1579 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1580 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1582 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1583 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1585 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1589 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1590 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1591 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1592 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1594 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1596 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1598 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1599 silently ignoring one of them.
1601 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1602 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1603 containing this change was 5.92.
1605 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1606 automatically newline terminated.
1608 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1609 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1610 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1611 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1614 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1615 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1616 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1619 ** Scheduled for removal
1621 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1622 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1624 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1625 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1626 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1627 command to unlink a directory.
1629 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1630 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1631 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1632 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1636 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1637 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1638 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1639 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1640 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1641 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1645 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1646 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1648 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1650 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1651 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1652 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1654 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1655 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1658 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1659 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1661 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1662 list directories before files.
1664 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1665 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1666 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1667 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1670 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1672 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1674 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1675 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1676 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1678 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1679 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1683 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1684 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1685 usually printing nothing.
1687 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1689 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1690 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1691 them with hard-linked directories.
1693 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1694 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1695 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1697 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1698 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1699 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1701 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1704 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1705 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1707 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1708 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1710 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1711 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1713 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1714 all command-line arguments.
1716 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1718 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1720 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1721 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1723 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1725 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1726 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1727 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1728 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1729 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1731 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1732 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1734 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1735 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1736 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1737 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1739 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1741 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1745 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1746 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1748 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1749 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1751 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1752 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1754 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1755 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1757 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1758 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1760 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1762 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1763 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1764 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1767 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1769 ** Build-related bug fixes
1771 installing .mo files would fail
1774 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1778 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1780 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1783 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1787 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1788 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1792 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1794 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1795 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1797 ** Deprecated options
1799 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1800 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1802 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1806 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1808 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1809 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1810 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1811 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1813 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1816 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1822 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1827 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1829 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1831 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1832 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1833 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1835 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1836 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1837 problematic usages. These include:
1839 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1840 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1841 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1842 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1843 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1844 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1845 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1846 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1847 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1849 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1850 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1852 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1853 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1854 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1855 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1857 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1858 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1859 between binary and text files.
1861 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1865 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1869 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1870 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1872 head tac tail tee tr
1873 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1875 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1876 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1878 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1879 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1880 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1882 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1884 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1886 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1887 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1888 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1892 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1894 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1895 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1897 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1898 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1899 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1903 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1904 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1908 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1909 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1910 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1914 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1915 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1919 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1921 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1923 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1927 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1928 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1929 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1931 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1932 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1933 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1934 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1935 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1937 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1941 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1942 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1943 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1945 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1947 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1948 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1949 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1950 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1952 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1954 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1955 rather than silently wrapping around.
1957 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1958 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1960 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1961 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1963 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1964 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1965 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1966 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1968 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1970 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1972 ** Improved robustness
1974 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1975 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1976 no matter how large the result.
1978 ** Improved portability
1980 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1981 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1983 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1985 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1986 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1987 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1989 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1990 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1994 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1995 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1997 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1999 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2000 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2001 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2002 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2004 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2005 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2007 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2008 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2009 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2011 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2013 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2014 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2016 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2017 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2019 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2021 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2022 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2024 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2025 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2027 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2028 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2029 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2031 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2033 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2035 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2039 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2041 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2042 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2043 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2045 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2046 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2048 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2049 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2050 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2052 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2053 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2055 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2056 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2057 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2058 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2060 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2061 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2063 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2064 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2065 the file system does not support it.
2067 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2069 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2070 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2072 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2074 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2075 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2077 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2078 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2079 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2080 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2082 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2083 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2086 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2087 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2088 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2089 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2091 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2092 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2093 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2094 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2096 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2097 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2099 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2101 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2102 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2103 reporting incorrect results.
2107 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2108 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2110 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2113 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2115 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2116 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2118 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2119 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2121 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2124 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2125 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2126 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2127 the file name does not look like a page range.
2129 printf has several changes:
2131 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2132 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2134 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2135 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2136 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2138 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2139 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2142 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2143 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2145 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2146 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2148 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2150 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2151 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2153 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2155 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2157 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2158 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2159 when first encountering the directory.
2163 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2164 output; POSIX requires this.
2166 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2167 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2169 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2171 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2172 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2174 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2175 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2177 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2178 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2179 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2180 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2181 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2182 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2183 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2185 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2186 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2187 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2189 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2190 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2192 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2194 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2196 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2197 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2198 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2199 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2201 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2205 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2206 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2207 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2208 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2209 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2211 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2212 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2213 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2215 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2216 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2218 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2219 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2221 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2222 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2223 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2224 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2225 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2227 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2228 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2230 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2231 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2233 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2235 nocreat do not create the output file
2236 excl fail if the output file already exists
2237 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2238 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2240 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2242 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2243 direct use direct I/O for data
2244 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2245 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2246 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2247 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2248 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2250 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2252 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2253 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2256 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2257 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2258 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2259 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2260 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2261 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2263 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2264 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2266 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2269 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2271 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2273 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2274 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2276 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2277 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2278 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2280 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2281 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2282 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2284 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2286 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2287 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2289 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2290 for compatibility with bash.
2292 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2294 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2295 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2296 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2297 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2299 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2300 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2302 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2303 ls supports TABSIZE.
2304 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2305 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2306 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2308 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2311 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2313 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2314 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2315 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2316 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2317 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2318 an offset, not as a file name.
2320 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2321 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2323 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2324 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2326 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2327 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2329 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2330 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2331 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2333 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2334 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2336 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2337 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2341 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2343 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2345 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2349 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2350 or more arguments between partitions.
2352 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2353 holes in the destination.
2355 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2356 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2357 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2358 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2359 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2360 terminates immediately.
2362 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2364 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2366 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2367 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2368 not the empty string.
2370 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2371 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2375 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2376 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2377 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2380 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2387 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2391 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2392 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2394 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2395 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2397 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2398 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2399 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2402 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2406 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2407 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2409 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2410 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2412 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2413 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2414 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2416 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2418 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2421 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2423 ** Configuration option
2425 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2426 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2430 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2431 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2435 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2436 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2437 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2440 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2441 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2442 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2443 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2444 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2445 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2446 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2449 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2453 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2454 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2455 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2457 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2458 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2460 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2462 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2463 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2464 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2465 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2467 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2469 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2470 not just the ones that reference directories
2472 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2473 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2475 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2476 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2477 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2479 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2480 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2481 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2482 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2483 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2484 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2486 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2491 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2492 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2494 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2496 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2498 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2500 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2501 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2503 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2504 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2506 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2508 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2512 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2514 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2516 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2517 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2518 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2519 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2520 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2522 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2523 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2525 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2526 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2528 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2529 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2531 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2532 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2533 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2537 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2538 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2539 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2540 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2541 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2542 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2543 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2544 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2545 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2546 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2547 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2548 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2549 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2550 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2552 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2554 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2555 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2557 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2559 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2561 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2562 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2564 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2566 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2567 without a trailing newline.
2569 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2570 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2572 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2575 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2579 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2581 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2583 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2584 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2585 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2586 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2588 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2590 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2591 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2592 be printed without leading spaces.
2594 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2595 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2600 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2601 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2602 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2604 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2606 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2607 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2609 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2610 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2612 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2613 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2615 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2617 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2619 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2621 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2622 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2624 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2626 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2628 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2629 byte offsets are specified.
2632 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2635 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2638 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2639 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2640 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2641 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2642 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2643 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2644 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2645 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2646 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2647 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2648 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2649 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2650 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2651 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2652 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2653 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2654 directory where M has write access.
2655 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2656 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2657 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2660 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2661 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2662 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2663 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2664 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2665 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2666 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2667 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2668 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2669 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2670 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2671 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2672 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2673 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2674 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2675 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2676 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2677 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2678 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2679 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2680 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2681 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2682 appeared one additional time.
2684 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2685 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2686 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2687 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2690 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2691 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2692 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2693 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2694 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2695 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2696 if there were more than 338.
2698 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2699 - false --help now exits nonzero
2702 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2703 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2704 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2705 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2708 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2709 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2710 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2711 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2712 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2715 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2716 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2717 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2718 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2719 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2720 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2721 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2724 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2725 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2726 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2727 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2728 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2729 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2731 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2732 under certain unusual conditions
2733 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2734 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2737 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2738 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2739 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2740 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2741 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2742 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2743 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2744 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2745 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2746 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2747 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2748 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2749 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2750 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2751 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2752 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2755 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2756 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2759 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2760 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2761 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2762 involving hard-linked directories
2763 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2764 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2765 character-special and block files
2768 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2769 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2770 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2771 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2772 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2773 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2774 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2775 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2776 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2778 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2779 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2780 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2781 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2782 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2783 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2784 specified on the command line.
2785 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2786 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2787 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2788 the first file untouched.
2789 * readlink: new program
2790 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2791 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2792 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2793 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2794 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2795 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2798 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2799 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2800 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2801 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2802 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2803 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2804 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2805 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2806 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2807 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2808 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2809 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2811 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2812 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2813 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2815 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2816 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2817 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2818 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2819 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2820 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2821 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2822 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2825 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2826 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2829 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2830 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2831 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2832 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2833 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2834 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2835 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2838 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2839 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2841 ========================================================================
2842 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2843 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2846 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2848 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2849 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2850 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2851 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2852 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2853 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2854 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2855 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2856 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2857 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2858 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2859 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2861 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2862 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2863 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2864 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2866 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2869 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2871 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2872 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2873 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2874 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2875 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2876 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2877 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2880 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2881 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2882 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2883 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2884 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2885 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2886 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2887 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2888 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2889 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2890 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2891 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2892 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2893 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2894 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2895 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2897 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2898 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2900 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2901 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2902 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2903 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2904 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2905 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2907 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2908 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2909 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2910 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2911 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2912 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2913 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2915 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2916 the source files in the following example:
2917 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2918 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2919 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2920 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2921 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2922 links between source files with --preserve=links
2923 * cp accepts new options:
2924 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2925 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2926 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2927 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2928 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2929 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2930 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2931 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2932 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2934 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2935 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2936 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2937 even though it's older than dest.
2938 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2939 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2940 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2941 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2942 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2944 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2945 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2946 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2947 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2948 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2949 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2950 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2952 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2953 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2954 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2956 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2957 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2958 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2959 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2960 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2961 This is the default.
2963 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2964 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2965 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2966 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2967 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2969 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2972 ========================================================================
2973 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2974 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2977 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2978 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2980 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2981 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2982 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2983 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2984 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2986 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2987 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2988 that specifies a non-directory
2991 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2992 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2993 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2994 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2995 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2996 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2997 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2998 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2999 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3000 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3001 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3002 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3003 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3004 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3005 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3006 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3007 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3008 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3009 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3010 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3011 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3012 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3013 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3014 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3016 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3017 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3018 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3020 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3022 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3023 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3025 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3026 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3027 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3028 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3029 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3031 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3032 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3033 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3034 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3035 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3037 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3039 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3040 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3041 * still more portability fixes
3042 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3043 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3045 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3047 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3049 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3051 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3052 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3053 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3054 there is any time remaining
3055 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3057 ========================================================================
3058 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3059 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3061 This package began as the union of the following:
3062 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3064 ========================================================================
3066 Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3068 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3069 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3070 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3071 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3072 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3073 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.