1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 6.0-cvs (2006-??-??) [unstable]
7 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
8 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
9 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
11 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
12 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
14 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
15 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
17 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
18 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
20 ** Changes in behavior
22 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
23 where the two are distinct.
25 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
26 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
27 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
29 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
30 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
31 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
32 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
35 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
36 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
38 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
39 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
40 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by chrooted
41 bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
43 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
44 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
45 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
46 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
47 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
50 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
51 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
52 successful and the output is easier to parse.
54 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
55 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
56 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
57 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
59 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
60 and sticky) with the -m option.
62 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
63 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
64 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
65 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
66 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
68 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
69 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
71 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
72 silently ignoring one of them.
74 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
75 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
76 containing this change was 5.92.
78 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
79 automatically newline terminated.
81 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
82 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
83 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
84 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
87 ** Scheduled for removal
89 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
90 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
92 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
93 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
94 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
95 command to unlink a directory.
97 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
98 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
99 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
100 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
104 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
105 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
106 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
107 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
108 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
112 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
113 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
115 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
117 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
118 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
119 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
121 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
122 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
125 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
126 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
128 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
129 list directories before files.
131 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
132 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
133 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
134 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
137 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
141 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
142 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
143 usually printing nothing.
145 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
147 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
148 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
149 them with hard-linked directories.
151 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
152 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
153 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
155 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
156 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
157 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
159 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
160 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
162 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally
164 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
165 all command-line arguments.
167 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
169 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
171 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
172 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
174 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
176 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
177 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
178 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
179 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
180 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
182 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
183 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
185 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
187 [see branch for details]
189 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
193 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
194 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
196 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
197 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
199 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
200 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
202 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
203 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
205 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
206 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
208 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
210 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
211 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
212 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
215 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
217 ** Build-related bug fixes
219 installing .mo files would fail
222 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
226 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
228 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
231 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
235 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
236 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
240 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
242 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
243 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
245 ** Deprecated options
247 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
248 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
250 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
254 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
256 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
257 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
258 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
259 conforming to older POSIX versions.
261 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
264 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
270 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
275 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
277 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
279 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
280 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
281 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
283 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
284 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
285 problematic usages. These include:
287 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
288 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
289 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
290 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
291 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
292 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
293 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
294 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
295 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
297 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
298 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
300 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
301 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
302 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
303 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
305 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
306 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
307 between binary and text files.
309 The following programs now always use text input/output:
313 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
317 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
318 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
321 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
323 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
324 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
326 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
327 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
328 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
330 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
332 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
334 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
335 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
336 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
340 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
342 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
343 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
345 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
346 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
347 blocks until F contains N blocks.
351 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
352 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
356 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
357 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
358 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
362 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
363 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
367 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
369 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
371 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
375 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
376 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
377 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
379 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
380 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
381 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
382 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
383 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
385 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
389 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
390 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
391 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
393 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
395 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
396 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
397 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
398 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
400 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
402 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
403 rather than silently wrapping around.
405 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
406 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
408 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
409 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
411 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
412 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
413 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
416 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
418 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
420 ** Improved robustness
422 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
423 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
424 no matter how large the result.
426 ** Improved portability
428 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
429 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
431 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
433 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
434 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
435 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
437 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
438 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
442 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
443 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
445 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
447 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
448 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
449 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
450 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
452 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
453 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
455 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
456 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
457 categories if not specified by dircolors.
459 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
461 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
462 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
464 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
465 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
467 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
469 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
470 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
472 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
473 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
475 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
476 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
477 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
479 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
481 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
483 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
487 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
489 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
490 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
491 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
493 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
494 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
496 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
497 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
498 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
500 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
501 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
503 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
504 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
505 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
506 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
508 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
509 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
511 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
512 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
513 the file system does not support it.
515 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
517 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
518 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
520 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
522 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
523 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
525 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
526 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
527 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
528 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
530 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
531 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
534 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
535 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
536 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
537 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
539 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
540 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
541 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
542 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
544 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
545 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
547 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
549 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
550 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
551 reporting incorrect results.
555 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
556 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
558 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
561 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
563 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
564 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
566 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
567 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
569 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
572 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
573 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
574 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
575 the file name does not look like a page range.
577 printf has several changes:
579 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
580 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
582 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
583 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
584 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
586 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
587 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
590 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
591 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
593 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
594 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
596 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
598 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
599 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
601 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
603 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
605 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
606 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
607 when first encountering the directory.
611 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
612 output; POSIX requires this.
614 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
615 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
617 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
619 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
620 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
622 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
623 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
625 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
626 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
627 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
628 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
629 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
630 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
631 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
633 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
634 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
635 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
637 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
638 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
640 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
642 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
644 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
645 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
646 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
647 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
649 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
653 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
654 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
655 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
656 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
657 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
659 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
660 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
661 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
663 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
664 is longer than PATH_MAX.
666 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
667 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
669 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
670 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
671 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
672 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
673 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
675 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
676 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
678 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
679 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
681 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
683 nocreat do not create the output file
684 excl fail if the output file already exists
685 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
686 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
688 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
690 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
691 direct use direct I/O for data
692 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
693 sync likewise, but also for metadata
694 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
695 nofollow do not follow symlinks
696 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
698 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
700 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
701 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
704 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
705 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
706 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
707 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
708 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
709 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
711 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
712 list of NUL-terminated file names.
714 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
717 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
719 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
721 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
722 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
724 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
725 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
726 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
728 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
729 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
730 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
732 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
734 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
735 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
737 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
738 for compatibility with bash.
740 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
742 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
743 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
744 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
745 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
747 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
748 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
750 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
752 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
753 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
754 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
756 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
759 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
761 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
762 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
763 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
764 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
765 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
766 an offset, not as a file name.
768 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
769 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
771 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
772 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
774 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
775 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
777 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
778 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
779 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
781 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
782 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
784 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
785 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
789 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
791 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
793 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
797 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
798 or more arguments between partitions.
800 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
801 holes in the destination.
803 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
804 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
805 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
806 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
807 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
808 terminates immediately.
810 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
812 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
814 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
815 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
816 not the empty string.
818 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
819 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
823 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
824 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
825 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
828 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
835 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
839 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
840 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
842 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
843 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
845 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
846 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
847 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
850 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
854 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
855 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
857 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
858 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
860 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
861 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
862 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
864 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
866 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
869 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
871 ** Configuration option
873 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
874 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
878 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
879 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
883 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
884 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
885 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
888 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
889 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
890 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
891 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
892 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
893 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
894 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
897 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
901 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
902 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
903 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
905 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
906 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
908 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
910 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
911 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
912 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
913 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
915 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
917 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
918 not just the ones that reference directories
920 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
921 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
923 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
924 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
925 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
927 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
928 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
929 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
930 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
931 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
932 ragged when a datum was too wide.
934 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
939 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
940 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
942 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
944 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
946 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
948 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
949 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
951 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
952 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
954 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
956 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
960 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
962 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
964 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
965 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
966 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
967 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
968 resolution is the best we can do right now.
970 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
971 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
973 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
974 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
976 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
977 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
979 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
980 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
981 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
985 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
986 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
987 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
988 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
989 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
990 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
991 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
992 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
993 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
994 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
995 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
996 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
997 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
998 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1000 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1002 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1003 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1005 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1007 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1009 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1010 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1012 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1014 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1015 without a trailing newline.
1017 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1018 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1020 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1023 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1027 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1029 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1031 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1032 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1033 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1034 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1036 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1038 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1039 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1040 be printed without leading spaces.
1042 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1043 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1048 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1049 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1050 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1052 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1054 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1055 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1057 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1058 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1060 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1061 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1063 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1065 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1067 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1069 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1070 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1072 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1074 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1076 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1077 byte offsets are specified.
1080 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1083 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1086 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1087 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1088 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1089 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1090 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1091 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1092 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1093 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1094 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1095 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1096 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1097 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1098 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1099 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1100 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1101 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1102 directory where M has write access.
1103 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1104 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1105 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1108 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1109 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1110 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1111 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1112 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1113 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1114 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1115 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1116 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1117 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1118 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1119 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1120 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1121 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1122 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1123 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1124 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1125 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1126 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1127 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1128 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1129 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1130 appeared one additional time.
1132 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1133 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1134 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1135 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1138 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1139 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1140 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1141 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1142 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1143 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1144 if there were more than 338.
1146 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1147 - false --help now exits nonzero
1150 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1151 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1152 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1153 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1156 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1157 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1158 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1159 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1160 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1163 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1164 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1165 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1166 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1167 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1168 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1169 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1172 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1173 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1174 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1175 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1176 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1177 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1179 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1180 under certain unusual conditions
1181 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1182 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1185 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1186 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1187 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1188 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1189 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1190 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1191 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1192 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1193 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1194 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1195 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1196 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1197 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1198 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1199 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1200 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1203 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1204 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1207 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1208 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1209 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1210 involving hard-linked directories
1211 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1212 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1213 character-special and block files
1216 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1217 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1218 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1219 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1220 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1221 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1222 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1223 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1224 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1226 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1227 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1228 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1229 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1230 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1231 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1232 specified on the command line.
1233 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1234 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1235 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1236 the first file untouched.
1237 * readlink: new program
1238 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1239 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1240 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1241 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1242 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1243 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1246 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1247 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1248 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1249 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1250 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1251 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1252 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1253 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1254 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1255 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1256 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1257 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1259 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1260 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1261 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1263 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1264 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1265 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1266 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1267 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1268 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1269 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1270 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1273 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1274 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1277 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1278 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1279 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1280 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1281 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1282 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1283 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1286 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1287 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1289 ========================================================================
1290 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1291 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1294 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1296 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1297 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1298 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1299 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1300 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1301 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1302 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1303 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1304 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1305 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1306 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1307 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1309 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1310 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1311 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1312 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1314 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1317 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1319 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1320 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1321 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1322 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1323 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1324 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1325 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1328 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1329 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1330 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1331 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1332 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1333 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1334 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1335 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1336 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1337 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1338 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1339 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1340 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1341 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1342 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1343 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1345 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1346 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1348 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1349 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1350 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1351 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1352 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1353 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1355 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1356 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1357 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1358 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1359 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1360 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1361 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1363 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1364 the source files in the following example:
1365 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1366 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1367 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1368 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1369 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1370 links between source files with --preserve=links
1371 * cp accepts new options:
1372 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1373 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1374 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1375 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1376 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1377 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1378 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1379 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1380 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1382 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1383 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1384 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1385 even though it's older than dest.
1386 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1387 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1388 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1389 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1390 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1392 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1393 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1394 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1395 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1396 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1397 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1398 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1400 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1401 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1402 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1404 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1405 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1406 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1407 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1408 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1409 This is the default.
1411 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1412 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1413 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1414 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1415 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1417 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1420 ========================================================================
1421 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1422 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1425 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1426 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1428 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1429 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1430 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1431 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1432 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1434 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1435 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1436 that specifies a non-directory
1439 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1440 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1441 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1442 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1443 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1444 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1445 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1446 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1447 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1448 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1449 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1450 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1451 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1452 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1453 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1454 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1455 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1456 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1457 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1458 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1459 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1460 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1461 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1462 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1464 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1465 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1466 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1468 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1470 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1471 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1473 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1474 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1475 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1476 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1477 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1479 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1480 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1481 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1482 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1483 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1485 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1487 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1488 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1489 * still more portability fixes
1490 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1491 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1493 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1495 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1497 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1499 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1500 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1501 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1502 there is any time remaining
1503 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1505 ========================================================================
1506 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1507 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1509 This package began as the union of the following:
1510 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.