1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2004-03-17) [unstable]
7 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
9 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
10 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic points to, instead.
11 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
13 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
14 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
16 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
17 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
18 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
20 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
21 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
23 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
24 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
25 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
26 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
28 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
29 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
31 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
32 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
33 the file system does not support it.
35 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
37 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
39 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
40 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
41 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
42 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
44 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
45 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
46 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
47 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
49 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
50 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
52 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
54 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
55 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
56 reporting incorrect results.
60 If it fails to lower the nice value due to lack of permissions,
61 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
63 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current nice
64 value happens to be -1.
66 It no longer assumes that nice values range from -20 through 19.
68 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nice values to the
69 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
71 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
72 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
74 printf has several changes:
76 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
77 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
79 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
80 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
81 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
83 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
84 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
87 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
88 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
90 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
91 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
93 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
95 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
97 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
98 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
99 when first encountering the directory.
101 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
102 output; POSIX requires this.
104 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
105 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
106 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
107 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
108 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
109 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
110 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
112 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
113 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
114 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
116 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
117 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
119 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
121 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
123 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
124 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
125 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
126 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
128 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
132 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
133 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
134 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
135 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
136 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
138 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
139 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
140 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
142 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
143 is longer than PATH_MAX.
145 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
146 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
148 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
149 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
150 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
151 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
152 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
154 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
156 nocreat do not create the output file
157 excl fail if the output file already exists
158 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
159 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
161 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
163 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
164 direct use direct I/O for data
165 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
166 sync likewise, but also for metadata
167 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
168 nofollow do not follow symlinks
170 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
172 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
173 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
176 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
177 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
178 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
179 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
180 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
181 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
183 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
184 list of NUL-terminated file names.
186 `date -d' and `touch -d' now accept integer counts of seconds since
187 1970 when prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents
188 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
190 `date -d', `date -f' and `touch -d' now handle fractional time
191 stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
193 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
194 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
196 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
197 for compatibility with bash.
199 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
200 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
202 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
204 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
205 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
206 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
208 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
211 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
213 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
214 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
215 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
216 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
217 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
218 an offset, not as a file name.
220 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
221 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
223 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
224 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
226 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
227 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
229 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
230 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
231 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
233 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
234 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
238 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
240 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
242 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
246 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
247 or more arguments between partitions.
249 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
250 holes in the destination.
252 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
253 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
254 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
255 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
256 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
257 terminates immediately.
259 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
261 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
263 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
264 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
265 not the empty string.
267 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
268 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
272 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
273 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
274 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
277 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
284 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
288 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
289 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
291 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
292 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
294 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
295 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
296 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
299 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
303 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
304 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
306 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
307 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
309 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
310 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
311 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
313 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
315 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
318 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
320 ** Configuration option
322 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
323 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
327 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
328 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
332 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
333 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
334 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
337 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
338 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
339 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
340 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
341 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
342 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
345 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
349 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
350 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
351 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
353 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
354 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
356 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
358 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
359 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
360 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
361 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
363 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
365 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
366 not just the ones that reference directories
368 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
369 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
371 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
372 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
373 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
375 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
376 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
377 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
378 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
379 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
380 ragged when a datum was too wide.
382 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
387 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
388 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
390 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
392 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
394 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
396 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
397 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
399 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
400 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
402 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
404 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
408 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
410 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
412 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
413 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
414 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
415 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
416 resolution is the best we can do right now.
418 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
419 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
421 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
422 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
424 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
425 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
427 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
428 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
429 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
433 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
434 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
435 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
436 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
437 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
438 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
439 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
440 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
441 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
442 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
443 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
444 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
445 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
446 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
448 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
450 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
451 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
453 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
455 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
457 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
458 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
460 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
462 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
463 without a trailing newline.
465 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
466 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
468 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
471 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
475 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
477 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
479 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
480 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
481 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
482 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
484 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
486 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
487 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
488 be printed without leading spaces.
490 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
491 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
496 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
497 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
498 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
500 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
502 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
503 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
505 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
506 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
508 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
509 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
511 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
513 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
515 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
517 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
518 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
520 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
522 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
524 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
525 byte offsets are specified.
528 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
531 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
534 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
535 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
536 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
537 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
538 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
539 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
540 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
541 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
542 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
543 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
544 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
545 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
546 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
547 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
548 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
549 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
550 directory where M has write access.
551 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
552 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
553 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
556 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
557 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
558 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
559 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
560 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
561 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
562 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
563 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
564 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
565 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
566 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
567 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
568 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
569 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
570 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
571 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
572 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
573 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
574 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
575 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
576 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
577 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
578 appeared one additional time.
580 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
581 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
582 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
583 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
586 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
587 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
588 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
589 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
590 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
591 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
592 if there were more than 338.
594 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
595 - false --help now exits nonzero
598 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
599 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
600 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
601 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
604 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
605 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
606 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
607 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
608 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
611 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
612 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
613 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
614 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
615 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
616 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
617 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
620 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
621 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
622 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
623 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
624 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
625 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
627 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
628 under certain unusual conditions
629 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
630 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
633 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
634 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
635 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
636 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
637 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
638 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
639 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
640 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
641 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
642 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
643 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
644 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
645 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
646 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
647 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
648 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
651 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
652 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
655 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
656 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
657 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
658 involving hard-linked directories
659 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
660 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
661 character-special and block files
664 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
665 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
666 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
667 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
668 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
669 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
670 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
671 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
672 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
674 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
675 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
676 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
677 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
678 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
679 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
680 specified on the command line.
681 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
682 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
683 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
684 the first file untouched.
685 * readlink: new program
686 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
687 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
688 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
689 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
690 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
691 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
694 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
695 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
696 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
697 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
698 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
699 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
700 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
701 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
702 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
703 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
704 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
705 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
707 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
708 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
709 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
711 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
712 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
713 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
714 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
715 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
716 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
717 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
718 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
721 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
722 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
725 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
726 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
727 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
728 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
729 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
730 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
731 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
734 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
735 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
737 ========================================================================
738 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
739 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
742 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
744 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
745 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
746 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
747 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
748 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
749 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
750 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
751 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
752 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
753 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
754 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
755 The old options will continue to work for a while.
757 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
758 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
759 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
760 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
762 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
765 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
767 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
768 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
769 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
770 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
771 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
772 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
773 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
776 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
777 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
778 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
779 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
780 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
781 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
782 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
783 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
784 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
785 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
786 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
787 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
788 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
789 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
790 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
791 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
793 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
794 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
796 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
797 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
798 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
799 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
800 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
801 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
803 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
804 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
805 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
806 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
807 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
808 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
809 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
811 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
812 the source files in the following example:
813 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
814 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
815 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
816 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
817 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
818 links between source files with --preserve=links
819 * cp accepts new options:
820 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
821 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
822 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
823 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
824 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
825 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
826 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
827 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
828 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
830 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
831 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
832 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
833 even though it's older than dest.
834 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
835 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
836 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
837 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
838 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
840 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
841 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
842 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
843 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
844 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
845 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
846 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
848 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
849 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
850 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
852 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
853 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
854 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
855 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
856 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
859 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
860 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
861 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
862 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
863 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
865 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
868 ========================================================================
869 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
870 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
873 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
874 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
876 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
877 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
878 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
879 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
880 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
882 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
883 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
884 that specifies a non-directory
887 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
888 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
889 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
890 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
891 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
892 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
893 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
894 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
895 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
896 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
897 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
898 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
899 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
900 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
901 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
902 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
903 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
904 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
905 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
906 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
907 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
908 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
909 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
910 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
912 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
913 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
914 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
916 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
918 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
919 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
921 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
922 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
923 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
924 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
925 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
927 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
928 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
929 required support; from Bruno Haible.
930 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
931 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
933 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
935 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
936 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
937 * still more portability fixes
938 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
939 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
941 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
943 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
945 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
947 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
948 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
949 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
950 there is any time remaining
951 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
953 ========================================================================
954 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
955 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
957 This package began as the union of the following:
958 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
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