1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 chown and chgrp with the -v --from= options, now output the correct owner.
8 I.E. for skipped files, the original ownership is output, not the new one.
9 [bug introduced in sh-utils-2.0g]
11 printf '%d' '"' no longer accesses out-of-bounds memory in the diagnostic.
12 [bug introduced in sh-utils-1.16]
14 split --number l/... no longer creates extraneous files in certain cases.
15 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
17 ** Changes in behavior
19 chmod -v and -c now output the original mode in the messages.
23 split accepts a new --filter=CMD option. With it, split filters output
24 through CMD. CMD may use the $FILE environment variable, which is set to
25 the nominal output file name for each invocation of CMD. For example, to
26 split a file into 3 approximately equal parts, which are then compressed:
27 split -n3 --filter='xz > $FILE.xz' big
28 Note the use of single quotes, not double quotes.
29 That creates files named xaa.xz, xab.xz and xac.xz.
33 shuf outputs small subsets of large permutations much more efficiently.
34 For example `shuf -i1-$((2**32-1)) -n2` no longer exhausts memory.
37 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.12 (2011-04-26) [stable]
41 tail's --follow=name option no longer implies --retry on systems
42 with inotify support. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
44 ** Changes in behavior
46 cp's extent-based (FIEMAP) copying code is more reliable in the face
47 of varying and undocumented file system semantics:
48 - it no longer treats unwritten extents specially
49 - a FIEMAP-based extent copy always uses the FIEMAP_FLAG_SYNC flag.
50 Before, it would incur the performance penalty of that sync only
51 for 2.6.38 and older kernels. We thought all problems would be
53 - it now attempts a FIEMAP copy only on a file that appears sparse.
54 Sparse files are relatively unusual, and the copying code incurs
55 the performance penalty of the now-mandatory sync only for them.
59 dd once again compiles on AIX 5.1 and 5.2
62 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.11 (2011-04-13) [stable]
66 cp -a --link would not create a hardlink to a symlink, instead
67 copying the symlink and then not preserving its timestamp.
68 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
70 cp now avoids FIEMAP issues with BTRFS before Linux 2.6.38,
71 which could result in corrupt copies of sparse files.
72 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
74 cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
75 delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
76 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
78 du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR
79 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
81 sort no longer spawns 7 worker threads to sort 16 lines
82 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
84 touch built on Solaris 9 would segfault when run on Solaris 10
85 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
87 wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
88 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
92 dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options,
93 which will discard any cache associated with the files, or
94 processed portion thereof.
96 dd now warns that 'iflag=fullblock' should be used,
97 in various cases where partial reads can cause issues.
99 ** Changes in behavior
101 cp now avoids syncing files when possible, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
102 The sync is only needed on Linux kernels before 2.6.39.
103 [The sync was introduced in coreutils-8.10]
105 cp now copies empty extents efficiently, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
106 It no longer reads the zero bytes from the input, and also can efficiently
107 create a hole in the output file when --sparse=always is specified.
109 df now aligns columns consistently, and no longer wraps entries
110 with longer device identifiers, over two lines.
112 install now rejects its long-deprecated --preserve_context option.
113 Use --preserve-context instead.
115 test now accepts "==" as a synonym for "="
118 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
122 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
123 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
124 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
125 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
126 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
128 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
129 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
131 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
132 reject file names invalid for that file system.
134 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
135 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
139 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
140 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
141 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
142 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
143 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
144 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
145 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
146 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
148 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
149 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
150 the same number of fields are output for each line.
152 ** Changes in behavior
154 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
155 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
156 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
159 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
163 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
164 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
165 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
168 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
172 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
173 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
175 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
176 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
178 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
179 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
181 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
182 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
183 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
184 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
186 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
187 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
189 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
190 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
191 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
193 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
195 ** Changes in behavior
197 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
198 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
199 to the number of available processors.
203 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
206 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
210 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
211 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
212 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
213 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
215 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
216 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
217 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
219 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
220 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
222 ** Changes in behavior
224 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
225 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
227 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
228 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
229 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
230 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
231 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
232 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
234 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
235 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
236 the same way as the others.
239 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
243 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
244 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
245 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
247 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
248 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
250 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
251 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
252 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
254 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
255 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
257 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
258 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
260 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
261 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
262 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
264 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
265 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
266 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
267 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
271 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
272 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
274 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
277 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
278 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
280 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
282 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
283 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
284 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
286 ** Changes in behavior
288 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
289 rather than its aliased target.
291 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
292 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
293 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
295 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
296 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
297 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
298 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
299 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
300 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
301 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
302 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
304 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
306 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
308 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
309 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
312 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
313 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
314 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
315 control like taskset for example.
317 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
319 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
320 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
321 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
322 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
323 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
324 includes %C when context information is available.
326 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
327 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
328 rather than a file system attribute.
330 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
331 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
332 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
333 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
335 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
336 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
337 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
339 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
340 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
341 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
344 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
348 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
349 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
351 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
353 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
354 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
356 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
357 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
358 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
359 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
361 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
362 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
363 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
367 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
368 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
370 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
371 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
372 duration after the initial signal was sent.
374 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
375 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
376 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
377 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
378 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
379 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
380 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
381 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
382 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
384 ** Changes in behavior
386 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
387 sequence when it would be a no-op.
389 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
390 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
393 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
397 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
398 of available processors, which may not have been the case
399 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
400 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
404 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
405 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
407 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
408 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
409 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
410 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
412 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
413 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
414 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
417 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
421 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
422 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
423 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
425 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
426 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
427 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
429 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
430 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
432 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
433 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
434 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
435 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
437 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
438 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
439 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
441 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
442 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
443 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
444 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
446 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
447 renamed-aside and then recreated.
448 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
450 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
451 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
452 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
453 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
455 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
456 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
457 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
459 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
460 processes will not intersperse their output.
461 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
464 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
468 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
469 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
471 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
472 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
474 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
475 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
476 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
477 the presence of the empty string argument.
478 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
480 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
481 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
482 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
483 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
485 tail without -f no longer accesses uninitialized memory
486 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
488 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
489 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
490 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
492 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
493 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
494 and with a malicious user on the same system
495 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
496 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
499 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
503 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
504 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
505 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
507 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
508 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
509 offending directory and all "contents."
511 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
512 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
513 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
515 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
516 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
517 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
519 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
520 processes will not intersperse their output.
521 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
522 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
524 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
525 output the name of the file to stdout.
526 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
528 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
529 call fails with errno == EACCES.
530 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
532 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
533 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
536 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
537 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
538 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
540 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
541 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
542 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
543 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
544 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
545 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
547 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
548 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
549 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
550 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
552 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
553 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
555 ** Changes in behavior
557 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
558 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
559 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
560 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
561 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
563 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
564 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
565 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
566 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
568 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
570 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
571 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
572 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
573 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
574 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
578 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
582 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
583 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
585 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
586 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
588 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
589 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
590 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
592 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
593 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
596 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
600 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
601 when the source file doesn't have write access.
602 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
604 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
605 to accommodate leap seconds.
606 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
608 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
609 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
610 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
612 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
614 "ls -is" is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
615 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
616 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
618 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
619 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
620 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
621 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
622 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
626 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
627 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
628 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
629 directory or a symlink to a directory.
631 ** Changes in behavior
633 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
634 environment variable is set.
636 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
637 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
638 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
642 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
643 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
644 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
645 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
647 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
648 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
649 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
650 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
654 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
655 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
656 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
658 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
659 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
660 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
661 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
662 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
663 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
666 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
667 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
670 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
674 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
675 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
676 and libraries tested at configure time.
677 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
679 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
680 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
682 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
683 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
685 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
686 printing a summary to stderr.
687 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
689 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
690 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
691 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
693 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
694 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
696 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
697 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
698 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
699 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
701 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
702 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
703 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
704 which is relatively unusual.
705 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
707 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
708 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
709 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
710 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
711 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
712 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
713 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
717 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
718 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
719 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
720 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
721 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
725 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
726 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
728 ** Changes in behavior
730 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
731 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
732 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
733 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
734 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
737 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
741 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
742 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
744 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
745 before data copying has started.
747 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
748 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
750 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
751 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
752 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
753 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
755 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
756 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
757 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
758 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
760 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
765 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
766 for its standard streams.
768 ** Changes in behavior
770 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
771 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
772 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
773 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
774 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
775 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
777 ** Deprecated options
779 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
780 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
784 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
786 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
787 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
790 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
792 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
793 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
795 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
796 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
799 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
803 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
804 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
805 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
806 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
808 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
809 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
810 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
811 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
812 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
817 make check: two tests have been corrected
821 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
822 inherited from gnulib.
825 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
829 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
830 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
831 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
832 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
834 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
835 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
837 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
839 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
840 systems without xattr support.
842 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
843 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
844 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
846 ** Changes in behavior
848 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
849 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
850 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
851 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
853 ** Improved robustness
855 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
856 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
857 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
858 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
859 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
860 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
861 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
862 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
863 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
867 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
868 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
870 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
871 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
872 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
873 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
874 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
877 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
881 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
882 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
883 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
887 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
888 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
889 data was read, or on process exit.
890 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
892 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
893 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
894 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
895 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
897 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
898 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
899 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
900 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
902 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
903 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
905 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
906 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
908 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
909 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
910 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
912 ** Changes in behavior
914 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
915 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
916 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
918 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
919 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
921 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
922 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
923 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
926 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
930 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
932 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
933 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
934 install: Never copies xattrs
936 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
937 from overwriting any existing destination file
939 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
940 mode where this feature is available.
942 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
943 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
944 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
945 do not modify the destination at all.
947 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
949 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
953 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
954 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
956 cp uses much less memory in some situations
958 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
959 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
961 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
962 processing the first file name
964 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
965 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
966 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
967 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
969 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
970 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
972 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
973 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
976 ** Changes in behavior
978 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
979 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
981 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
982 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
983 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
985 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
986 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
988 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
990 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
991 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
992 is still marked with a '+'.
995 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
999 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
1000 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
1004 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
1005 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
1006 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
1007 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
1008 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
1009 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
1011 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1012 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1014 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
1015 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
1017 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
1019 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
1020 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
1021 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
1023 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
1024 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
1026 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
1027 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
1028 used to factor large numbers.
1030 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
1033 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
1035 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
1037 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
1038 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
1040 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
1041 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
1042 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
1043 maximum command-line (argv) length.
1045 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
1046 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
1047 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
1049 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
1050 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
1054 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
1056 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
1057 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
1059 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
1060 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
1062 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
1064 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
1065 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
1069 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
1070 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
1071 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
1073 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
1075 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
1076 no matter how many files are in a given directory
1078 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
1079 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
1080 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
1082 ** Changes in behavior
1084 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
1085 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
1088 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
1092 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
1094 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
1095 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
1096 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
1098 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
1099 with no USERNAME argument.
1101 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
1102 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
1103 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
1105 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
1106 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
1107 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
1108 number of fields for some inputs.
1110 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
1111 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1113 ** Changes in behavior
1115 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1116 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1119 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1123 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1125 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1126 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1127 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1128 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1130 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1131 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1133 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1134 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1136 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1137 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1139 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1140 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1141 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1142 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1144 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1145 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1146 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1147 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1148 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1149 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1151 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1152 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1154 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1155 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1156 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1158 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1159 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1161 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1162 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1164 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1165 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1166 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1167 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1169 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1170 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1172 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1173 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1175 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1176 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1177 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1181 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1182 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1184 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1185 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1186 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1187 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1191 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1192 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1194 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1196 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1200 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1201 which have negative errno values.
1205 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1209 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1213 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1214 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1217 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1221 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1222 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1223 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1225 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1226 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1227 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1228 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1232 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1233 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1234 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1235 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1238 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1242 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1244 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1245 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1246 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1249 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1253 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1254 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1256 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1258 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1260 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1262 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1266 ** Changes in behavior
1268 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1269 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1271 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1272 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1274 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1275 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1276 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1280 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1281 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1282 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1283 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1284 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1285 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1286 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1287 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1288 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1289 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1290 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1292 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1293 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1294 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1297 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1300 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1301 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1302 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1304 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1305 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1306 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1309 ** New build options
1311 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1312 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1313 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1314 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1316 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1317 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1318 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1319 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1320 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1321 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1322 of "make check" fail.
1324 ** Remove deprecated options
1326 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1327 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1328 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1329 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1330 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1332 ** Improved robustness
1334 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1335 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1336 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1337 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1338 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1339 loss of the contents of a/f.
1341 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1342 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1346 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1347 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1348 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1350 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1351 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1352 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1353 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1355 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1356 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1357 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1358 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1359 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1360 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1361 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1362 destination is a symlink.
1364 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1366 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1367 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1369 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1370 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1372 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1374 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1375 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1377 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1378 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1380 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1383 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1384 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1386 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1387 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1389 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1390 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1391 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1392 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1394 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1395 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1396 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1398 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1399 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1400 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1402 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1403 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1404 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1405 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1407 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1408 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1409 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1411 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1412 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1414 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1415 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1417 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1419 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1420 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1421 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1423 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1424 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1426 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1427 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1429 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1430 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1432 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1433 [present in the original version]
1436 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1440 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1442 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1443 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1444 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1446 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1447 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1449 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1453 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1454 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1456 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1457 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1459 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1460 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1462 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1463 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1464 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1465 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1466 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1467 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1469 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1470 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1473 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1474 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1476 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1479 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1480 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1481 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1483 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1484 directory is unreadable.
1486 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1487 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1488 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1490 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1491 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1492 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1493 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1494 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1497 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1498 Before it would print nothing.
1500 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1502 "rm -rf D" would emit a misleading diagnostic when failing to
1503 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1504 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1505 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1506 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1507 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1508 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1509 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1511 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1515 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1516 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1517 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1519 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1520 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1521 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1522 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1525 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1529 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1530 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1531 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1532 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1533 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1534 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1535 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1537 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1538 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1539 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1540 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1541 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1542 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1543 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1544 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1546 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1547 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1548 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1551 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1555 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1556 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1558 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1559 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1560 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1562 ** Improved robustness
1564 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1565 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1566 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1569 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1573 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1574 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1575 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1576 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1577 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1579 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1583 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1586 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1590 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1591 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1592 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1593 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1595 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1596 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1598 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1599 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1600 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1603 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1605 ** Improved robustness
1607 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1608 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1610 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1611 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1612 or NFS-mounted partition.
1614 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1615 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1619 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1620 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1621 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1622 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1623 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1624 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1626 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1627 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1629 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1630 or neglect to report file removal.
1632 For the "groups" command:
1634 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1635 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1637 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1639 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1641 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1645 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1646 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1649 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1651 ** Changes in behavior
1653 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1654 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1655 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1656 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1658 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1659 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1660 a final `./' or `../' component.
1662 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1663 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1664 this only for pipes.
1666 ** Infrastructure changes
1668 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1669 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1670 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1671 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1675 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1676 name is "." or "..".
1678 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1679 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1680 dirent.d_type support.
1682 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1683 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1685 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1686 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1687 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1688 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1691 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1693 ** Changes in behavior
1695 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1699 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1700 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1704 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1705 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1706 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1708 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1709 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1711 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1712 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1714 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1716 ** Improved robustness
1718 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1719 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1720 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1722 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1723 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1726 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1727 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1729 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1730 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1732 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1733 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1735 ** Changes in behavior
1737 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1738 where the two are distinct.
1740 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1741 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1742 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1743 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1744 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1745 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1746 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1747 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1748 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1749 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1750 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1751 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1752 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1753 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1754 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1755 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1756 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1758 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1759 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1760 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1762 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1763 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1764 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1765 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1768 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1769 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1773 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1774 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1775 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1776 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1778 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1779 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1780 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1782 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1783 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1784 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1785 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1786 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1789 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1790 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1792 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1793 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1794 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1795 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1797 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1798 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1799 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1801 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1802 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1803 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1804 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1806 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1807 and sticky) with the -m option.
1809 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1810 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1811 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1812 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1813 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1815 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1816 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1818 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1822 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1823 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1824 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1825 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1827 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1829 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1831 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1832 silently ignoring one of them.
1834 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1835 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1836 containing this change was 5.92.
1838 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1839 automatically newline terminated.
1841 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1842 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1843 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1844 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1847 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1848 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1849 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1852 ** Scheduled for removal
1854 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1855 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1857 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1858 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1859 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1860 command to unlink a directory.
1862 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1863 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1864 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1865 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1869 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1870 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1871 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1872 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1873 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1874 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1878 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1879 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1881 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1883 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1884 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1885 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1887 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1888 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1891 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1892 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1894 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1895 list directories before files.
1897 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1898 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1899 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1900 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1903 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1905 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1907 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1908 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1909 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1911 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1912 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1916 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1917 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1918 usually printing nothing.
1920 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1922 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1923 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1924 them with hard-linked directories.
1926 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1927 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1928 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1930 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1931 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1932 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1934 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1937 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1938 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1940 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1941 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1943 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1944 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1946 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1947 all command-line arguments.
1949 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1951 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1953 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1954 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1956 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1958 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1959 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1960 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1961 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1962 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1964 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1965 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1967 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1968 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1969 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1970 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1972 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1974 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1978 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1979 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1981 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1982 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1984 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1985 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1987 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1988 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1990 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1991 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1993 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1995 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1996 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1997 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
2000 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
2002 ** Build-related bug fixes
2004 installing .mo files would fail
2007 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
2011 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
2013 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
2016 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
2020 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
2021 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
2025 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
2027 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
2028 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
2030 ** Deprecated options
2032 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
2033 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
2035 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
2039 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
2041 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
2042 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
2043 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
2044 conforming to older POSIX versions.
2046 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
2049 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
2055 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
2060 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
2062 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
2064 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
2065 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
2066 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
2068 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
2069 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
2070 problematic usages. These include:
2072 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
2073 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
2074 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
2075 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
2076 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
2077 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
2078 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
2079 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
2080 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
2082 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
2083 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
2085 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
2086 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
2087 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
2088 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
2090 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
2091 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
2092 between binary and text files.
2094 The following programs now always use text input/output:
2098 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
2102 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
2103 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
2105 head tac tail tee tr
2106 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
2108 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
2109 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
2111 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2112 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2113 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2115 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2117 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2119 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2120 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2121 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2125 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2127 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2128 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2130 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2131 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2132 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2136 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2137 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2141 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2142 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2143 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2147 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2148 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2152 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2154 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2156 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2160 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2161 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2162 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2164 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2165 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2166 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2167 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2168 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2170 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2174 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2175 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2176 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2178 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2180 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2181 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2182 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2183 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2185 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2187 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2188 rather than silently wrapping around.
2190 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2191 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2193 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2194 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2196 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2197 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2198 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2199 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2201 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2203 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2205 ** Improved robustness
2207 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2208 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2209 no matter how large the result.
2211 ** Improved portability
2213 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2214 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2216 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2218 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2219 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2220 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2222 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2223 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2227 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2228 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2230 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2232 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2233 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2234 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2235 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2237 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2238 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2240 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2241 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2242 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2244 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2246 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2247 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2249 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2250 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2252 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2254 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2255 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2257 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2258 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2260 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2261 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2262 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2264 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2266 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2268 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2272 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2274 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2275 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2276 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2278 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2279 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2281 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2282 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2283 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2285 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2286 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2288 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2289 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2290 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2291 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2293 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2294 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2296 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2297 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2298 the file system does not support it.
2300 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2302 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2303 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2305 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2307 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2308 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2310 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2311 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2312 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2313 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2315 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2316 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2319 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2320 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2321 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2322 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2324 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2325 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2326 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2327 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2329 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2330 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2332 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2334 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2335 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2336 reporting incorrect results.
2340 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2341 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2343 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2346 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2348 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2349 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2351 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2352 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2354 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2357 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2358 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2359 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2360 the file name does not look like a page range.
2362 printf has several changes:
2364 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2365 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2367 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2368 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2369 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2371 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2372 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2375 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2376 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2378 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2379 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2381 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2383 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2384 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2386 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2388 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2390 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2391 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2392 when first encountering the directory.
2396 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2397 output; POSIX requires this.
2399 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2400 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2402 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2404 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2405 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2407 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2408 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2410 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2411 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2412 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2413 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2414 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2415 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2416 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2418 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2419 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2420 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2422 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2423 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2425 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2427 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2429 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2430 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2431 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2432 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2434 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2438 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2439 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2440 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2441 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2442 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2444 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2445 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2446 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2448 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2449 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2451 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2452 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2454 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2455 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2456 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2457 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2458 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2460 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2461 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2463 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2464 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2466 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2468 nocreat do not create the output file
2469 excl fail if the output file already exists
2470 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2471 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2473 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2475 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2476 direct use direct I/O for data
2477 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2478 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2479 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2480 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2481 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2483 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2485 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2486 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2489 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2490 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2491 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2492 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2493 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2494 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2496 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2497 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2499 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2502 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2504 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2506 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2507 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2509 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2510 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2511 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2513 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2514 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2515 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2517 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2519 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2520 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2522 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2523 for compatibility with bash.
2525 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2527 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2528 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2529 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2530 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2532 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2533 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2535 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2536 ls supports TABSIZE.
2537 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2538 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2539 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2541 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2544 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2546 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2547 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2548 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2549 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2550 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2551 an offset, not as a file name.
2553 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2554 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2556 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2557 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2559 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2560 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2562 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2563 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2564 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2566 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2567 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2569 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2570 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2574 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2576 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2578 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2582 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2583 or more arguments between partitions.
2585 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2586 holes in the destination.
2588 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2589 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2590 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2591 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2592 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2593 terminates immediately.
2595 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2597 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2599 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2600 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2601 not the empty string.
2603 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2604 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2608 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2609 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2610 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2613 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2620 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2624 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2625 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2627 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2628 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2630 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2631 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2632 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2635 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2639 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2640 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2642 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2643 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2645 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2646 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2647 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2649 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2651 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2654 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2656 ** Configuration option
2658 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2659 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2663 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2664 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2668 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2669 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2670 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2673 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2674 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2675 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2676 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2677 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2678 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2679 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2682 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2686 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2687 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2688 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2690 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2691 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2693 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2695 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2696 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2697 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2698 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2700 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2702 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2703 not just the ones that reference directories
2705 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2706 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2708 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2709 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2710 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2712 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2713 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2714 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2715 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2716 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2717 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2719 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2724 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2725 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2727 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2729 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2731 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2733 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2734 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2736 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2737 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2739 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2741 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2745 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2747 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2749 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2750 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2751 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2752 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2753 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2755 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2756 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2758 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2759 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2761 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2762 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2764 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2765 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2766 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2770 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2771 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2772 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2773 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2774 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2775 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2776 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2777 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2778 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2779 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2780 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2781 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2782 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2783 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2785 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2787 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2788 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2790 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2792 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2794 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2795 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2797 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2799 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2800 without a trailing newline.
2802 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2803 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2805 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2808 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2812 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2814 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2816 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2817 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2818 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2819 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2821 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2823 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2824 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2825 be printed without leading spaces.
2827 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2828 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2833 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2834 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2835 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2837 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2839 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2840 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2842 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2843 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2845 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2846 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2848 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2850 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2852 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2854 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2855 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2857 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2859 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2861 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2862 byte offsets are specified.
2865 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2868 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2871 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2872 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2873 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2874 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2875 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2876 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2877 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2878 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2879 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2880 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2881 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2882 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2883 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2884 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2885 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2886 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2887 directory where M has write access.
2888 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2889 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2890 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2893 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2894 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2895 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2896 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2897 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2898 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2899 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2900 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2901 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2902 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2903 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2904 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2905 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2906 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2907 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2908 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2909 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2910 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2911 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2912 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2913 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2914 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2915 appeared one additional time.
2917 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2918 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2919 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2920 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2923 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2924 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2925 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2926 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2927 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2928 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2929 if there were more than 338.
2931 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2932 - false --help now exits nonzero
2935 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2936 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2937 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2938 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2941 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2942 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2943 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2944 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2945 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2948 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2949 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2950 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2951 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2952 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2953 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2954 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2957 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2958 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2959 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2960 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2961 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2962 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2964 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2965 under certain unusual conditions
2966 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2967 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2970 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2971 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2972 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2973 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2974 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2975 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2976 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2977 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2978 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2979 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2980 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2981 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2982 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2983 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2984 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2985 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2988 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2989 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2992 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2993 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2994 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2995 involving hard-linked directories
2996 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2997 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2998 character-special and block files
3001 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
3002 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
3003 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
3004 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
3005 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
3006 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
3007 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
3008 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
3009 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
3011 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
3012 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
3013 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
3014 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
3015 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
3016 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
3017 specified on the command line.
3018 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
3019 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
3020 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
3021 the first file untouched.
3022 * readlink: new program
3023 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
3024 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
3025 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
3026 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
3027 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
3028 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
3031 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
3032 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
3033 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
3034 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
3035 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
3036 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
3037 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
3038 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
3039 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
3040 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
3041 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
3042 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
3044 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
3045 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
3046 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
3048 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
3049 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
3050 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
3051 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
3052 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
3053 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
3054 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
3055 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
3058 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
3059 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
3062 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
3063 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
3064 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
3065 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
3066 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
3067 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
3068 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
3071 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
3072 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
3074 ========================================================================
3075 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
3076 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3079 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
3081 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3082 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
3083 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
3084 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
3085 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
3086 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
3087 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
3088 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
3089 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
3090 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
3091 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
3092 The old options will continue to work for a while.
3094 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
3095 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
3096 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
3097 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
3099 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
3102 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
3104 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
3105 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
3106 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
3107 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
3108 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
3109 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
3110 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3113 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3114 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3115 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3116 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3117 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
3118 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3119 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
3120 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3121 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3122 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3123 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
3124 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
3125 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3126 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3127 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3128 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3130 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3131 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3133 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3134 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3135 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3136 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3137 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3138 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3140 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3141 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3142 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3143 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3144 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3145 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3146 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3148 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3149 the source files in the following example:
3150 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3151 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3152 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3153 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3154 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3155 links between source files with --preserve=links
3156 * cp accepts new options:
3157 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3158 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3159 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3160 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3161 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3162 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3163 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3164 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
3165 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3167 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3168 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3169 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3170 even though it's older than dest.
3171 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3172 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3173 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3174 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3175 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3177 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3178 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3179 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3180 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3181 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3182 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3183 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3185 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3186 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3187 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3189 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3190 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3191 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3192 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3193 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3194 This is the default.
3196 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3197 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3198 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3199 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3200 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3202 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3205 ========================================================================
3206 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3207 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3210 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3211 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3213 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3214 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3215 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3216 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3217 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3219 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3220 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3221 that specifies a non-directory
3224 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3225 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3226 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3227 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3228 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3229 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3230 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3231 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3232 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3233 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3234 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3235 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3236 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3237 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3238 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3239 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3240 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3241 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3242 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3243 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3244 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3245 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3246 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3247 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3249 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3250 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3251 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3253 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3255 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3256 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3258 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3259 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3260 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3261 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3262 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3264 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3265 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3266 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3267 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3268 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3270 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3272 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3273 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3274 * still more portability fixes
3275 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3276 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3278 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3280 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3282 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3284 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3285 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3286 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3287 there is any time remaining
3288 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3290 ========================================================================
3291 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3292 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3294 This package began as the union of the following:
3295 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3297 ========================================================================
3299 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3301 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3302 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3303 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3304 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3305 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3306 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.