1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
8 delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
9 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
11 wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
12 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
15 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
19 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
20 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
21 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
22 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
23 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
25 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
26 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
28 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
29 reject file names invalid for that file system.
31 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
32 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
36 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
37 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
38 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
39 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
40 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
41 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
42 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
43 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
45 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
46 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
47 the same number of fields are output for each line.
49 ** Changes in behavior
51 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
52 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
53 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
56 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
60 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
61 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
62 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
65 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
69 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
70 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
72 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
73 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
75 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
76 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
78 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
79 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
80 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
81 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
83 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
84 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
86 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
87 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
88 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
90 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
92 ** Changes in behavior
94 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
95 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
96 to the number of available processors.
100 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
103 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
107 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
108 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
109 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
110 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
112 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
113 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
114 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
116 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
117 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
119 ** Changes in behavior
121 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
122 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
124 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
125 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
126 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
127 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
128 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
129 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
131 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
132 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
133 the same way as the others.
136 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
140 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
141 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
142 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
144 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
145 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
147 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
148 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
149 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
151 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
152 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
154 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
155 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
157 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
158 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
159 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
161 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
162 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
163 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
164 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
168 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
169 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
171 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
174 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
175 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
177 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
179 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
180 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
181 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
183 ** Changes in behavior
185 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
186 rather than its aliased target.
188 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
189 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
190 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
192 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
193 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
194 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
195 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
196 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
197 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
198 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
199 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
201 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
203 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
205 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
206 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
209 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
210 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
211 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
212 control like taskset for example.
214 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
216 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
217 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
218 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
219 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
220 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
221 includes %C when context information is available.
223 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
224 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
225 rather than a file system attribute.
227 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
228 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
229 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
230 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
232 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
233 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
234 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
236 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
237 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
238 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
241 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
245 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
246 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
248 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
250 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
251 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
253 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
254 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
255 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
256 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
258 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
259 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
260 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
264 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
265 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
267 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
268 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
269 duration after the initial signal was sent.
271 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
272 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
273 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
274 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
275 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
276 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
277 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
278 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
279 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
281 ** Changes in behavior
283 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
284 sequence when it would be a no-op.
286 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
287 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
290 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
294 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
295 of available processors, which may not have been the case
296 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
297 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
301 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
302 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
304 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
305 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
306 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
307 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
309 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
310 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
311 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
314 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
318 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
319 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
320 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
322 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
323 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
324 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
326 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
327 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
329 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
330 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
331 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
332 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
334 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
335 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
336 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
338 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
339 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
340 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
341 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
343 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
344 renamed-aside and then recreated.
345 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
347 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
348 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
349 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
350 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
352 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
353 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
354 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
356 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
357 processes will not intersperse their output.
358 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
361 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
365 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
366 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
368 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
369 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
371 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
372 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
373 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
374 the presence of the empty string argument.
375 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
377 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
378 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
379 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
380 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
382 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
383 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
385 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
386 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
387 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
389 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
390 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
391 and with a malicious user on the same system
392 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
393 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
396 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
400 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
401 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
402 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
404 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
405 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
406 offending directory and all "contents."
408 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
409 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
410 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
412 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
413 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
414 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
416 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
417 processes will not intersperse their output.
418 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
419 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
421 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
422 output the name of the file to stdout.
423 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
425 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
426 call fails with errno == EACCES.
427 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
429 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
430 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
433 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
434 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
435 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
437 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
438 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
439 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
440 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
441 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
442 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
444 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
445 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
446 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
447 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
449 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
450 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
452 ** Changes in behavior
454 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
455 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
456 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
457 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
458 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
460 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
461 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
462 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
463 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
465 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
467 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
468 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
469 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
470 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
471 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
475 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
479 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
480 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
482 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
483 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
485 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
486 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
487 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
489 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
490 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
493 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
497 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
498 when the source file doesn't have write access.
499 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
501 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
502 to accommodate leap seconds.
503 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
505 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
506 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
507 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
509 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
511 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
512 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
513 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
515 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
516 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
517 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
518 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
519 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
523 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
524 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
525 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
526 directory or a symlink to a directory.
528 ** Changes in behavior
530 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
531 environment variable is set.
533 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
534 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
535 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
539 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
540 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
541 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
542 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
544 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
545 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
546 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
547 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
551 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
552 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
553 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
555 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
556 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
557 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
558 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
559 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
560 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
563 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
564 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
567 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
571 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
572 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
573 and libraries tested at configure time.
574 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
576 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
577 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
579 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
580 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
582 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
583 printing a summary to stderr.
584 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
586 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
587 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
588 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
590 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
591 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
593 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
594 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
595 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
596 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
598 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
599 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
600 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
601 which is relatively unusual.
602 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
604 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
605 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
606 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
607 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
608 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
609 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
610 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
614 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
615 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
616 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
617 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
618 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
622 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
623 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
625 ** Changes in behavior
627 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
628 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
629 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
630 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
631 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
634 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
638 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
639 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
641 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
642 before data copying has started.
644 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
645 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
647 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
648 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
649 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
650 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
652 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
653 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
654 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
655 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
657 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
662 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
663 for its standard streams.
665 ** Changes in behavior
667 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
668 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
669 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
670 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
671 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
672 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
674 ** Deprecated options
676 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
677 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
681 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
683 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
684 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
687 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
689 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
690 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
692 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
693 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
696 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
700 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
701 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
702 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
703 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
705 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
706 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
707 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
708 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
709 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
714 make check: two tests have been corrected
718 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
719 inherited from gnulib.
722 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
726 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
727 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
728 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
729 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
731 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
732 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
734 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
736 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
737 systems without xattr support.
739 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
740 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
741 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
743 ** Changes in behavior
745 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
746 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
747 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
748 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
750 ** Improved robustness
752 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
753 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
754 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
755 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
756 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
757 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
758 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
759 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
760 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
764 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
765 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
767 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
768 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
769 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
770 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
771 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
774 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
778 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
779 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
780 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
784 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
785 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
786 data was read, or on process exit.
787 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
789 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
790 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
791 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
792 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
794 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
795 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
796 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
797 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
799 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
800 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
802 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
803 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
805 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
806 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
807 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
809 ** Changes in behavior
811 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
812 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
813 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
815 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
816 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
818 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
819 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
820 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
823 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
827 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
829 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
830 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
831 install: Never copies xattrs
833 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
834 from overwriting any existing destination file
836 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
837 mode where this feature is available.
839 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
840 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
841 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
842 do not modify the destination at all.
844 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
846 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
850 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
851 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
853 cp uses much less memory in some situations
855 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
856 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
858 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
859 processing the first file name
861 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
862 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
863 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
864 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
866 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
867 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
869 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
870 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
873 ** Changes in behavior
875 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
876 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
878 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
879 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
880 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
882 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
883 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
885 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
887 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
888 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
889 is still marked with a '+'.
892 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
896 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
897 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
901 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
902 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
903 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
904 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
905 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
906 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
908 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
909 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
911 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
912 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
914 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
916 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
917 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
918 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
920 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
921 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
923 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
924 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
925 used to factor large numbers.
927 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
930 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
932 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
934 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
935 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
937 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
938 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
939 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
940 maximum command-line (argv) length.
942 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
943 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
944 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
946 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
947 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
951 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
953 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
954 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
956 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
957 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
959 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
961 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
962 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
966 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
967 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
968 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
970 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
972 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
973 no matter how many files are in a given directory
975 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
976 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
977 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
979 ** Changes in behavior
981 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
982 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
985 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
989 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
991 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
992 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
993 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
995 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
996 with no USERNAME argument.
998 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
999 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
1000 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
1002 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
1003 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
1004 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
1005 number of fields for some inputs.
1007 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
1008 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1010 ** Changes in behavior
1012 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1013 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1016 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1020 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1022 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1023 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1024 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1025 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1027 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1028 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1030 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1031 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1033 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1034 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1036 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1037 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1038 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1039 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1041 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1042 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1043 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1044 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1045 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1046 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1048 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1049 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1051 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1052 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1053 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1055 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1056 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1058 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1059 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1061 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1062 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1063 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1064 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1066 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1067 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1069 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1070 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1072 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1073 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1074 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1078 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1079 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1081 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1082 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1083 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1084 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1088 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1089 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1091 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1093 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1097 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1098 which have negative errno values.
1102 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1106 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1110 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1111 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1114 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1118 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1119 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1120 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1122 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1123 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1124 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1125 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1129 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1130 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1131 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1132 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1135 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1139 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1141 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1142 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1143 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1146 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1150 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1151 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1153 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1155 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1157 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1159 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1163 ** Changes in behavior
1165 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1166 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1168 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1169 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1171 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1172 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1173 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1177 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1178 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1179 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1180 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1181 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1182 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1183 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1184 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1185 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1186 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1187 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1189 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1190 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1191 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1194 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1197 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1198 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1199 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1201 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1202 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1203 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1206 ** New build options
1208 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1209 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1210 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1211 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1213 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1214 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1215 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1216 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1217 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1218 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1219 of "make check" fail.
1221 ** Remove deprecated options
1223 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1224 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1225 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1226 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1227 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1229 ** Improved robustness
1231 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1232 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1233 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1234 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1235 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1236 loss of the contents of a/f.
1238 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1239 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1243 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1244 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1245 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1247 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1248 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1249 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1250 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1252 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1253 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1254 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1255 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1256 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1257 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1258 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1259 destination is a symlink.
1261 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1263 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1264 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1266 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1267 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1269 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1271 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1272 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1274 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1275 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1277 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1280 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1281 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1283 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1284 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1286 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1287 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1288 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1289 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1291 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1292 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1293 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1295 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1296 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1297 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1299 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1300 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1301 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1302 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1304 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1305 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1306 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1308 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1309 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1311 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1312 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1314 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1316 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1317 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1318 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1320 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1321 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1323 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1324 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1326 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1327 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1329 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1330 [present in the original version]
1333 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1337 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1339 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1340 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1341 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1343 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1344 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1346 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1350 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1351 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1353 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1354 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1356 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1357 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1359 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1360 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1361 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1362 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1363 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1364 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1366 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1367 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1370 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1371 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1373 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1376 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1377 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1378 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1380 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1381 directory is unreadable.
1383 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1384 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1385 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1387 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1388 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1389 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1390 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1391 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1394 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1395 Before it would print nothing.
1397 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1399 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1400 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1401 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1402 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1403 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1404 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1405 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1406 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1408 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1412 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1413 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1414 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1416 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1417 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1418 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1419 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1422 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1426 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1427 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1428 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1429 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1430 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1431 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1432 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1434 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1435 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1436 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1437 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1438 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1439 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1440 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1441 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1443 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1444 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1445 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1448 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1452 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1453 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1455 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1456 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1457 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1459 ** Improved robustness
1461 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1462 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1463 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1466 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1470 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1471 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1472 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1473 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1474 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1476 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1480 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1483 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1487 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1488 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1489 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1490 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1492 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1493 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1495 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1496 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1497 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1500 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1502 ** Improved robustness
1504 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1505 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1507 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1508 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1509 or NFS-mounted partition.
1511 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1512 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1516 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1517 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1518 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1519 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1520 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1521 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1523 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1524 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1526 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1527 or neglect to report file removal.
1529 For the "groups" command:
1531 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1532 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1534 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1536 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1538 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1542 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1543 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1546 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1548 ** Changes in behavior
1550 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1551 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1552 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1553 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1555 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1556 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1557 a final `./' or `../' component.
1559 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1560 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1561 this only for pipes.
1563 ** Infrastructure changes
1565 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1566 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1567 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1568 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1572 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1573 name is "." or "..".
1575 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1576 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1577 dirent.d_type support.
1579 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1580 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1582 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1583 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1584 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1585 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1588 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1590 ** Changes in behavior
1592 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1596 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1597 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1601 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1602 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1603 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1605 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1606 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1608 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1609 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1611 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1613 ** Improved robustness
1615 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1616 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1617 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1619 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1620 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1623 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1624 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1626 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1627 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1629 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1630 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1632 ** Changes in behavior
1634 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1635 where the two are distinct.
1637 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1638 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1639 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1640 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1641 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1642 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1643 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1644 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1645 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1646 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1647 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1648 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1649 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1650 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1651 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1652 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1653 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1655 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1656 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1657 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1659 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1660 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1661 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1662 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1665 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1666 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1670 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1671 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1672 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1673 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1675 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1676 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1677 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1679 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1680 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1681 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1682 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1683 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1686 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1687 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1689 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1690 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1691 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1692 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1694 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1695 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1696 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1698 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1699 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1700 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1701 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1703 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1704 and sticky) with the -m option.
1706 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1707 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1708 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1709 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1710 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1712 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1713 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1715 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1719 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1720 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1721 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1722 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1724 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1726 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1728 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1729 silently ignoring one of them.
1731 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1732 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1733 containing this change was 5.92.
1735 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1736 automatically newline terminated.
1738 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1739 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1740 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1741 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1744 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1745 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1746 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1749 ** Scheduled for removal
1751 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1752 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1754 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1755 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1756 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1757 command to unlink a directory.
1759 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1760 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1761 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1762 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1766 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1767 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1768 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1769 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1770 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1771 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1775 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1776 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1778 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1780 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1781 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1782 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1784 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1785 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1788 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1789 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1791 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1792 list directories before files.
1794 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1795 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1796 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1797 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1800 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1802 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1804 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1805 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1806 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1808 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1809 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1813 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1814 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1815 usually printing nothing.
1817 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1819 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1820 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1821 them with hard-linked directories.
1823 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1824 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1825 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1827 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1828 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1829 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1831 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1834 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1835 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1837 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1838 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1840 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1841 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1843 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1844 all command-line arguments.
1846 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1848 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1850 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1851 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1853 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1855 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1856 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1857 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1858 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1859 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1861 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1862 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1864 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1865 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1866 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1867 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1869 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1871 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1875 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1876 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1878 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1879 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1881 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1882 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1884 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1885 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1887 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1888 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1890 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1892 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1893 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1894 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1897 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1899 ** Build-related bug fixes
1901 installing .mo files would fail
1904 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1908 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1910 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1913 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1917 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1918 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1922 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1924 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1925 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1927 ** Deprecated options
1929 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1930 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1932 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1936 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1938 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1939 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1940 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1941 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1943 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1946 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1952 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1957 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1959 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1961 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1962 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1963 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1965 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1966 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1967 problematic usages. These include:
1969 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1970 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1971 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1972 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1973 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1974 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1975 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1976 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1977 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1979 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1980 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1982 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1983 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1984 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1985 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1987 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1988 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1989 between binary and text files.
1991 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1995 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1999 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
2000 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
2002 head tac tail tee tr
2003 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
2005 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
2006 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
2008 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2009 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2010 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2012 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2014 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2016 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2017 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2018 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2022 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2024 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2025 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2027 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2028 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2029 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2033 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2034 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2038 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2039 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2040 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2044 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2045 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2049 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2051 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2053 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2057 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2058 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2059 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2061 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2062 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2063 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2064 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2065 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2067 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2071 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2072 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2073 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2075 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2077 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2078 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2079 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2080 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2082 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2084 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2085 rather than silently wrapping around.
2087 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2088 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2090 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2091 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2093 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2094 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2095 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2096 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2098 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2100 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2102 ** Improved robustness
2104 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2105 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2106 no matter how large the result.
2108 ** Improved portability
2110 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2111 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2113 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2115 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2116 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2117 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2119 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2120 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2124 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2125 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2127 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2129 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2130 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2131 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2132 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2134 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2135 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2137 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2138 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2139 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2141 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2143 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2144 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2146 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2147 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2149 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2151 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2152 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2154 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2155 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2157 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2158 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2159 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2161 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2163 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2165 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2169 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2171 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2172 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2173 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2175 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2176 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2178 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2179 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2180 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2182 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2183 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2185 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2186 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2187 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2188 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2190 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2191 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2193 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2194 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2195 the file system does not support it.
2197 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2199 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2200 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2202 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2204 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2205 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2207 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2208 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2209 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2210 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2212 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2213 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2216 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2217 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2218 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2219 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2221 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2222 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2223 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2224 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2226 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2227 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2229 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2231 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2232 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2233 reporting incorrect results.
2237 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2238 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2240 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2243 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2245 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2246 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2248 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2249 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2251 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2254 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2255 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2256 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2257 the file name does not look like a page range.
2259 printf has several changes:
2261 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2262 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2264 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2265 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2266 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2268 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2269 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2272 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2273 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2275 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2276 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2278 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2280 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2281 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2283 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2285 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2287 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2288 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2289 when first encountering the directory.
2293 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2294 output; POSIX requires this.
2296 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2297 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2299 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2301 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2302 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2304 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2305 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2307 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2308 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2309 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2310 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2311 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2312 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2313 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2315 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2316 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2317 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2319 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2320 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2322 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2324 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2326 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2327 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2328 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2329 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2331 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2335 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2336 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2337 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2338 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2339 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2341 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2342 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2343 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2345 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2346 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2348 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2349 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2351 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2352 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2353 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2354 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2355 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2357 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2358 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2360 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2361 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2363 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2365 nocreat do not create the output file
2366 excl fail if the output file already exists
2367 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2368 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2370 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2372 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2373 direct use direct I/O for data
2374 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2375 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2376 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2377 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2378 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2380 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2382 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2383 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2386 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2387 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2388 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2389 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2390 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2391 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2393 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2394 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2396 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2399 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2401 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2403 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2404 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2406 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2407 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2408 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2410 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2411 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2412 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2414 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2416 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2417 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2419 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2420 for compatibility with bash.
2422 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2424 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2425 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2426 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2427 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2429 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2430 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2432 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2433 ls supports TABSIZE.
2434 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2435 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2436 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2438 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2441 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2443 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2444 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2445 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2446 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2447 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2448 an offset, not as a file name.
2450 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2451 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2453 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2454 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2456 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2457 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2459 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2460 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2461 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2463 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2464 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2466 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2467 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2471 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2473 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2475 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2479 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2480 or more arguments between partitions.
2482 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2483 holes in the destination.
2485 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2486 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2487 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2488 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2489 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2490 terminates immediately.
2492 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2494 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2496 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2497 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2498 not the empty string.
2500 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2501 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2505 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2506 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2507 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2510 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2517 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2521 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2522 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2524 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2525 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2527 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2528 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2529 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2532 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2536 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2537 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2539 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2540 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2542 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2543 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2544 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2546 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2548 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2551 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2553 ** Configuration option
2555 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2556 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2560 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2561 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2565 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2566 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2567 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2570 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2571 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2572 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2573 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2574 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2575 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2576 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2579 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2583 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2584 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2585 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2587 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2588 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2590 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2592 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2593 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2594 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2595 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2597 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2599 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2600 not just the ones that reference directories
2602 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2603 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2605 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2606 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2607 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2609 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2610 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2611 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2612 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2613 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2614 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2616 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2621 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2622 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2624 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2626 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2628 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2630 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2631 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2633 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2634 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2636 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2638 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2642 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2644 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2646 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2647 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2648 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2649 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2650 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2652 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2653 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2655 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2656 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2658 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2659 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2661 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2662 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2663 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2667 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2668 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2669 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2670 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2671 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2672 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2673 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2674 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2675 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2676 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2677 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2678 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2679 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2680 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2682 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2684 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2685 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2687 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2689 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2691 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2692 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2694 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2696 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2697 without a trailing newline.
2699 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2700 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2702 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2705 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2709 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2711 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2713 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2714 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2715 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2716 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2718 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2720 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2721 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2722 be printed without leading spaces.
2724 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2725 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2730 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2731 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2732 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2734 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2736 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2737 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2739 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2740 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2742 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2743 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2745 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2747 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2749 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2751 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2752 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2754 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2756 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2758 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2759 byte offsets are specified.
2762 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2765 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2768 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2769 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2770 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2771 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2772 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2773 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2774 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2775 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2776 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2777 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2778 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2779 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2780 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2781 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2782 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2783 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2784 directory where M has write access.
2785 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2786 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2787 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2790 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2791 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2792 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2793 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2794 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2795 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2796 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2797 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2798 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2799 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2800 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2801 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2802 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2803 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2804 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2805 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2806 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2807 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2808 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2809 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2810 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2811 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2812 appeared one additional time.
2814 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2815 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2816 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2817 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2820 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2821 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2822 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2823 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2824 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2825 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2826 if there were more than 338.
2828 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2829 - false --help now exits nonzero
2832 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2833 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2834 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2835 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2838 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2839 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2840 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2841 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2842 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2845 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2846 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2847 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2848 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2849 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2850 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2851 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2854 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2855 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2856 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2857 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2858 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2859 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2861 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2862 under certain unusual conditions
2863 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2864 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2867 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2868 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2869 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2870 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2871 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2872 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2873 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2874 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2875 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2876 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2877 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2878 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2879 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2880 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2881 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2882 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2885 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2886 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2889 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2890 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2891 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2892 involving hard-linked directories
2893 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2894 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2895 character-special and block files
2898 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2899 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2900 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2901 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2902 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2903 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2904 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2905 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2906 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2908 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2909 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2910 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2911 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2912 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2913 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2914 specified on the command line.
2915 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2916 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2917 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2918 the first file untouched.
2919 * readlink: new program
2920 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2921 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2922 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2923 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2924 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2925 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2928 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2929 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2930 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2931 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2932 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2933 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2934 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2935 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2936 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2937 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2938 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2939 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2941 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2942 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2943 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2945 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2946 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2947 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2948 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2949 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2950 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2951 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2952 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2955 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2956 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2959 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2960 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2961 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2962 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2963 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2964 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2965 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2968 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2969 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2971 ========================================================================
2972 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2973 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2976 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2978 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2979 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2980 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2981 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2982 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2983 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2984 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2985 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2986 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2987 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2988 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2989 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2991 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2992 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2993 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2994 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2996 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2999 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
3001 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
3002 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
3003 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
3004 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
3005 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
3006 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
3007 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3010 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3011 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3012 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3013 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3014 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
3015 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3016 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
3017 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3018 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3019 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3020 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
3021 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
3022 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3023 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3024 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3025 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3027 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3028 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3030 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3031 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3032 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3033 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3034 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3035 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3037 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3038 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3039 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3040 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3041 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3042 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3043 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3045 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3046 the source files in the following example:
3047 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3048 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3049 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3050 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3051 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3052 links between source files with --preserve=links
3053 * cp accepts new options:
3054 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3055 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3056 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3057 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3058 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3059 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3060 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3061 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
3062 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3064 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3065 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3066 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3067 even though it's older than dest.
3068 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3069 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3070 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3071 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3072 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3074 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3075 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3076 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3077 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3078 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3079 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3080 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3082 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3083 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3084 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3086 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3087 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3088 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3089 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3090 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3091 This is the default.
3093 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3094 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3095 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3096 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3097 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3099 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3102 ========================================================================
3103 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3104 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3107 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3108 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3110 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3111 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3112 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3113 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3114 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3116 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3117 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3118 that specifies a non-directory
3121 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3122 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3123 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3124 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3125 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3126 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3127 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3128 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3129 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3130 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3131 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3132 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3133 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3134 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3135 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3136 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3137 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3138 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3139 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3140 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3141 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3142 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3143 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3144 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3146 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3147 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3148 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3150 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3152 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3153 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3155 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3156 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3157 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3158 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3159 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3161 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3162 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3163 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3164 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3165 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3167 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3169 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3170 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3171 * still more portability fixes
3172 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3173 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3175 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3177 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3179 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3181 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3182 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3183 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3184 there is any time remaining
3185 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3187 ========================================================================
3188 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3189 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3191 This package began as the union of the following:
3192 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3194 ========================================================================
3196 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3198 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3199 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3200 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3201 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3202 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3203 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.