1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 chown and chgrp with the -v --from= options, now output the correct owner.
8 I.E. for skipped files, the original ownership is output, not the new one.
9 [bug introduced in sh-utils-2.0g]
11 cp -r could mistakenly change the permissions of an existing destination
12 directory. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.8]
14 cp -u -p would fail to preserve one hard link for each up-to-date copy
15 of a src-hard-linked name in the destination tree. I.e., if s/a and s/b
16 are hard-linked and dst/s/a is up to date, "cp -up s dst" would copy s/b
17 to dst/s/b rather than simply linking dst/s/b to dst/s/a.
18 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
20 printf '%d' '"' no longer accesses out-of-bounds memory in the diagnostic.
21 [bug introduced in sh-utils-1.16]
23 split --number l/... no longer creates extraneous files in certain cases.
24 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
26 timeout now sends signals to commands that create their own process group.
27 timeout is no longer confused when starting off with a child process.
28 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.0]
30 unexpand -a now aligns correctly when there are spaces spanning a tabstop,
31 followed by a tab. In that case a space was dropped, causing misalignment.
32 We also now ensure that a space never precedes a tab.
33 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
35 ** Changes in behavior
37 chmod, chown and chgrp now output the original attributes in messages,
38 when -v or -c specified.
40 cp -au (where --preserve=links is implicit) may now replace newer
41 files in the destination, to mirror hard links from the source.
45 md5sum accepts the new --strict option. With --check, it makes the
46 tool exit non-zero for any invalid input line, rather than just warning.
47 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
49 split accepts a new --filter=CMD option. With it, split filters output
50 through CMD. CMD may use the $FILE environment variable, which is set to
51 the nominal output file name for each invocation of CMD. For example, to
52 split a file into 3 approximately equal parts, which are then compressed:
53 split -n3 --filter='xz > $FILE.xz' big
54 Note the use of single quotes, not double quotes.
55 That creates files named xaa.xz, xab.xz and xac.xz.
57 timeout accepts a new --foreground option, to support commands not started
58 directly from a shell prompt, where the command is interactive or needs to
59 receive signals initiated from the terminal.
63 cp and ls now support HP-UX 11.11's ACLs, thanks to improved support
66 df now supports disk partitions larger than 4 TiB on MacOS X 10.5
67 or newer and on AIX 5.2 or newer.
69 shuf outputs small subsets of large permutations much more efficiently.
70 For example `shuf -i1-$((2**32-1)) -n2` no longer exhausts memory.
72 stat -f now recognizes the GPFS, MQUEUE and PSTOREFS file system types.
74 timeout now supports sub-second timeouts.
78 Changes inherited from gnulib address a build failure on HP-UX 11.11
79 when using /opt/ansic/bin/cc.
82 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.12 (2011-04-26) [stable]
86 tail's --follow=name option no longer implies --retry on systems
87 with inotify support. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
89 ** Changes in behavior
91 cp's extent-based (FIEMAP) copying code is more reliable in the face
92 of varying and undocumented file system semantics:
93 - it no longer treats unwritten extents specially
94 - a FIEMAP-based extent copy always uses the FIEMAP_FLAG_SYNC flag.
95 Before, it would incur the performance penalty of that sync only
96 for 2.6.38 and older kernels. We thought all problems would be
98 - it now attempts a FIEMAP copy only on a file that appears sparse.
99 Sparse files are relatively unusual, and the copying code incurs
100 the performance penalty of the now-mandatory sync only for them.
104 dd once again compiles on AIX 5.1 and 5.2
107 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.11 (2011-04-13) [stable]
111 cp -a --link would not create a hardlink to a symlink, instead
112 copying the symlink and then not preserving its timestamp.
113 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
115 cp now avoids FIEMAP issues with BTRFS before Linux 2.6.38,
116 which could result in corrupt copies of sparse files.
117 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
119 cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
120 delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
121 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
123 du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR
124 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
126 sort no longer spawns 7 worker threads to sort 16 lines
127 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
129 touch built on Solaris 9 would segfault when run on Solaris 10
130 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
132 wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
133 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
137 dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options,
138 which will discard any cache associated with the files, or
139 processed portion thereof.
141 dd now warns that 'iflag=fullblock' should be used,
142 in various cases where partial reads can cause issues.
144 ** Changes in behavior
146 cp now avoids syncing files when possible, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
147 The sync is only needed on Linux kernels before 2.6.39.
148 [The sync was introduced in coreutils-8.10]
150 cp now copies empty extents efficiently, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
151 It no longer reads the zero bytes from the input, and also can efficiently
152 create a hole in the output file when --sparse=always is specified.
154 df now aligns columns consistently, and no longer wraps entries
155 with longer device identifiers, over two lines.
157 install now rejects its long-deprecated --preserve_context option.
158 Use --preserve-context instead.
160 test now accepts "==" as a synonym for "="
163 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
167 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
168 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
169 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
170 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
171 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
173 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
174 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
176 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
177 reject file names invalid for that file system.
179 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
180 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
184 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
185 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
186 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
187 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
188 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
189 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
190 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
191 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
193 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
194 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
195 the same number of fields are output for each line.
197 ** Changes in behavior
199 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
200 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
201 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
204 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
208 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
209 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
210 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
213 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
217 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
218 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
220 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
221 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
223 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
224 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
226 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
227 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
228 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
229 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
231 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
232 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
234 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
235 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
236 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
238 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
240 ** Changes in behavior
242 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
243 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
244 to the number of available processors.
248 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
251 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
255 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
256 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
257 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
258 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
260 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
261 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
262 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
264 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
265 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
267 ** Changes in behavior
269 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
270 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
272 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
273 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
274 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
275 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
276 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
277 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
279 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
280 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
281 the same way as the others.
284 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
288 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
289 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
290 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
292 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
293 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
295 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
296 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
297 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
299 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
300 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
302 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
303 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
305 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
306 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
307 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
309 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
310 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
311 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
312 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
316 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
317 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
319 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
322 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
323 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
325 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
327 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
328 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
329 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
331 ** Changes in behavior
333 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
334 rather than its aliased target.
336 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
337 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
338 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
340 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
341 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
342 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
343 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
344 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
345 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
346 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
347 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
349 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
351 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
353 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
354 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
357 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
358 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
359 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
360 control like taskset for example.
362 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
364 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
365 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
366 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
367 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
368 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
369 includes %C when context information is available.
371 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
372 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
373 rather than a file system attribute.
375 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
376 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
377 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
378 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
380 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
381 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
382 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
384 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
385 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
386 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
389 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
393 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
394 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
396 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
398 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
399 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
401 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
402 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
403 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
404 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
406 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
407 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
408 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
412 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
413 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
415 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
416 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
417 duration after the initial signal was sent.
419 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
420 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
421 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
422 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
423 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
424 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
425 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
426 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
427 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
429 ** Changes in behavior
431 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
432 sequence when it would be a no-op.
434 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
435 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
438 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
442 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
443 of available processors, which may not have been the case
444 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
445 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
449 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
450 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
452 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
453 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
454 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
455 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
457 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
458 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
459 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
462 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
466 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
467 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
468 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
470 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
471 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
472 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
474 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
475 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
477 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
478 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
479 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
480 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
482 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
483 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
484 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
486 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
487 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
488 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
489 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
491 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
492 renamed-aside and then recreated.
493 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
495 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
496 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
497 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
498 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
500 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
501 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
502 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
504 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
505 processes will not intersperse their output.
506 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
509 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
513 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
514 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
516 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
517 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
519 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
520 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
521 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
522 the presence of the empty string argument.
523 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
525 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
526 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
527 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
528 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
530 tail without -f no longer accesses uninitialized memory
531 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
533 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
534 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
535 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
537 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
538 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
539 and with a malicious user on the same system
540 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
541 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
544 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
548 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
549 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
550 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
552 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
553 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
554 offending directory and all "contents."
556 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
557 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
558 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
560 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
561 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
562 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
564 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
565 processes will not intersperse their output.
566 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
567 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
569 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
570 output the name of the file to stdout.
571 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
573 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
574 call fails with errno == EACCES.
575 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
577 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
578 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
581 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
582 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
583 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
585 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
586 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
587 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
588 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
589 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
590 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
592 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
593 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
594 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
595 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
597 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
598 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
600 ** Changes in behavior
602 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
603 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
604 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
605 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
606 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
608 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
609 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
610 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
611 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
613 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
615 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
616 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
617 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
618 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
619 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
623 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
627 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
628 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
630 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
631 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
633 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
634 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
635 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
637 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
638 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
641 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
645 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
646 when the source file doesn't have write access.
647 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
649 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
650 to accommodate leap seconds.
651 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
653 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
654 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
655 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
657 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
659 "ls -is" is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
660 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
661 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
663 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
664 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
665 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
666 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
667 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
671 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
672 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
673 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
674 directory or a symlink to a directory.
676 ** Changes in behavior
678 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
679 environment variable is set.
681 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
682 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
683 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
687 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
688 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
689 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
690 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
692 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
693 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
694 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
695 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
699 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
700 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
701 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
703 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
704 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
705 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
706 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
707 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
708 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
711 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
712 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
715 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
719 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
720 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
721 and libraries tested at configure time.
722 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
724 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
725 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
727 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
728 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
730 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
731 printing a summary to stderr.
732 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
734 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
735 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
736 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
738 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
739 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
741 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
742 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
743 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
744 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
746 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
747 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
748 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
749 which is relatively unusual.
750 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
752 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
753 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
754 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
755 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
756 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
757 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
758 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
762 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
763 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
764 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
765 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
766 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
770 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
771 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
773 ** Changes in behavior
775 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
776 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
777 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
778 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
779 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
782 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
786 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
787 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
789 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
790 before data copying has started.
792 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
793 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
795 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
796 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
797 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
798 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
800 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
801 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
802 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
803 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
805 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
810 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
811 for its standard streams.
813 ** Changes in behavior
815 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
816 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
817 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
818 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
819 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
820 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
822 ** Deprecated options
824 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
825 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
829 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
831 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
832 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
835 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
837 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
838 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
840 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
841 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
844 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
848 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
849 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
850 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
851 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
853 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
854 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
855 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
856 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
857 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
862 make check: two tests have been corrected
866 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
867 inherited from gnulib.
870 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
874 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
875 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
876 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
877 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
879 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
880 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
882 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
884 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
885 systems without xattr support.
887 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
888 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
889 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
891 ** Changes in behavior
893 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
894 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
895 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
896 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
898 ** Improved robustness
900 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
901 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
902 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
903 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
904 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
905 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
906 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
907 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
908 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
912 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
913 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
915 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
916 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
917 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
918 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
919 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
922 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
926 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
927 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
928 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
932 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
933 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
934 data was read, or on process exit.
935 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
937 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
938 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
939 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
940 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
942 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
943 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
944 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
945 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
947 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
948 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
950 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
951 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
953 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
954 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
955 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
957 ** Changes in behavior
959 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
960 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
961 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
963 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
964 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
966 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
967 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
968 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
971 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
975 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
977 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
978 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
979 install: Never copies xattrs
981 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
982 from overwriting any existing destination file
984 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
985 mode where this feature is available.
987 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
988 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
989 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
990 do not modify the destination at all.
992 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
994 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
998 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
999 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
1001 cp uses much less memory in some situations
1003 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
1004 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
1006 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
1007 processing the first file name
1009 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
1010 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
1011 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
1012 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1014 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
1015 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
1017 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
1018 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
1021 ** Changes in behavior
1023 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
1024 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
1026 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
1027 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
1028 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
1030 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
1031 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
1033 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
1035 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
1036 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
1037 is still marked with a '+'.
1040 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
1044 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
1045 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
1049 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
1050 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
1051 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
1052 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
1053 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
1054 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
1056 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1057 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1059 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
1060 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
1062 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
1064 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
1065 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
1066 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
1068 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
1069 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
1071 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
1072 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
1073 used to factor large numbers.
1075 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
1078 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
1080 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
1082 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
1083 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
1085 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
1086 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
1087 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
1088 maximum command-line (argv) length.
1090 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
1091 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
1092 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
1094 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
1095 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
1099 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
1101 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
1102 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
1104 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
1105 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
1107 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
1109 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
1110 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
1114 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
1115 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
1116 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
1118 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
1120 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
1121 no matter how many files are in a given directory. I.e., to list a directory
1122 with very many files, ls -1U is much more efficient.
1124 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
1125 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
1126 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
1128 ** Changes in behavior
1130 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
1131 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
1134 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
1138 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve nanosecond resolution on
1139 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimensat' and
1140 'futimens' system calls.
1144 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
1146 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
1147 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
1148 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
1150 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
1151 with no USERNAME argument.
1153 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
1154 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
1155 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
1157 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
1158 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
1159 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
1160 number of fields for some inputs.
1162 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
1163 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1165 ** Changes in behavior
1167 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1168 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1171 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1175 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1177 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1178 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1179 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1180 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1182 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1183 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1185 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1186 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1188 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1189 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1191 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1192 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1193 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1194 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1196 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1197 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1198 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1199 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1200 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1201 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1203 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1204 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1206 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1207 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1208 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1210 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1211 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1213 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1214 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1216 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1217 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1218 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1219 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1221 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1222 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1224 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1225 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1227 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1228 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1229 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1233 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1234 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1236 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1237 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1238 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1239 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1243 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1244 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1246 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1248 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1252 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1253 which have negative errno values.
1257 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1261 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1265 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1266 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1269 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1273 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1274 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1275 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1277 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1278 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1279 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1280 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1284 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1285 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1286 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1287 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1290 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1294 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1296 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1297 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1298 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1301 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1305 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1306 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1308 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1310 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1312 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1314 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1318 ** Changes in behavior
1320 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1321 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1323 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1324 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1326 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1327 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1328 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1332 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1333 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1334 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1335 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1336 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1337 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1338 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1339 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1340 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1341 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1342 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1344 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1345 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1346 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1349 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1352 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1353 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1354 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1356 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1357 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1358 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1361 ** New build options
1363 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1364 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1365 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1366 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1368 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1369 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1370 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1371 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1372 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1373 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1374 of "make check" fail.
1376 ** Remove deprecated options
1378 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1379 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1380 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1381 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1382 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1384 ** Improved robustness
1386 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1387 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1388 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1389 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1390 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1391 loss of the contents of a/f.
1393 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1394 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1398 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1399 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1400 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1402 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1403 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1404 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1405 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1407 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1408 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1409 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1410 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1411 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1412 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1413 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1414 destination is a symlink.
1416 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1418 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1419 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1421 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1422 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1424 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1426 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1427 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1429 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1430 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1432 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1435 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1436 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1438 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1439 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1441 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1442 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1443 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1444 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1446 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1447 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1448 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1450 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1451 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1452 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1454 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1455 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1456 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1457 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1459 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1460 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1461 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1463 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1464 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1466 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1467 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1469 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1471 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1472 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1473 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1475 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1476 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1478 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1479 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1481 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1482 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1484 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1485 [present in the original version]
1488 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1492 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1494 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1495 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1496 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1498 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1499 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1501 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1505 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1506 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1508 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1509 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1511 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1512 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1514 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1515 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1516 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1517 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1518 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1519 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1521 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1522 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1525 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1526 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1528 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1531 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1532 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1533 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1535 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1536 directory is unreadable.
1538 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1539 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1540 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1542 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1543 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1544 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1545 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1546 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1549 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1550 Before it would print nothing.
1552 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1554 "rm -rf D" would emit a misleading diagnostic when failing to
1555 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1556 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1557 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1558 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1559 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1560 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1561 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1563 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1567 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1568 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1569 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1571 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1572 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1573 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1574 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1577 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1581 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1582 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1583 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1584 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1585 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1586 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1587 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1589 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1590 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1591 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1592 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1593 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1594 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1595 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1596 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1598 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1599 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1600 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1603 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1607 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1608 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1610 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1611 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1612 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1614 ** Improved robustness
1616 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1617 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1618 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1621 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1625 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1626 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1627 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1628 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1629 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1631 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1635 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1638 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1642 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1643 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1644 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1645 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1647 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1648 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1650 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1651 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1652 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1655 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1657 ** Improved robustness
1659 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1660 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1662 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1663 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1664 or NFS-mounted partition.
1666 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1667 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1671 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1672 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1673 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1674 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1675 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1676 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1678 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1679 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1681 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1682 or neglect to report file removal.
1684 For the "groups" command:
1686 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1687 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1689 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1691 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1693 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1697 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1698 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1701 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1703 ** Changes in behavior
1705 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1706 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1707 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1708 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1710 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1711 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1712 a final `./' or `../' component.
1714 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1715 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1716 this only for pipes.
1718 ** Infrastructure changes
1720 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1721 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1722 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1723 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1727 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1728 name is "." or "..".
1730 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1731 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1732 dirent.d_type support.
1734 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1735 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1737 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1738 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1739 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1740 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1743 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1745 ** Changes in behavior
1747 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1751 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1752 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1756 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1757 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1758 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1760 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1761 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1763 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1764 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1766 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1768 ** Improved robustness
1770 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1771 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1772 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1774 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1775 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1778 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1779 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1781 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1782 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1784 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1785 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1787 ** Changes in behavior
1789 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1790 where the two are distinct.
1792 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1793 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1794 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1795 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1796 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1797 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1798 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1799 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1800 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1801 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1802 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1803 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1804 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1805 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1806 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1807 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1808 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1810 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1811 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1812 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1814 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1815 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1816 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1817 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1820 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1821 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1825 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1826 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1827 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1828 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1830 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1831 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1832 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1834 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1835 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1836 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1837 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1838 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1841 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1842 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1844 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1845 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1846 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1847 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1849 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1850 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1851 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1853 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1854 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1855 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1856 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1858 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1859 and sticky) with the -m option.
1861 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1862 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1863 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1864 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1865 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1867 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1868 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1870 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1874 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1875 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1876 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1877 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1879 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1881 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1883 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1884 silently ignoring one of them.
1886 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1887 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1888 containing this change was 5.92.
1890 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1891 automatically newline terminated.
1893 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1894 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1895 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1896 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1899 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1900 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1901 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1904 ** Scheduled for removal
1906 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1907 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1909 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1910 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1911 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1912 command to unlink a directory.
1914 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1915 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1916 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1917 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1921 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1922 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1923 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1924 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1925 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1926 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1930 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1931 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1933 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1935 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1936 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1937 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1939 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1940 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1943 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1944 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1946 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1947 list directories before files.
1949 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1950 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1951 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1952 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1955 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1957 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1959 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1960 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1961 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1963 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1964 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1968 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1969 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1970 usually printing nothing.
1972 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1974 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1975 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1976 them with hard-linked directories.
1978 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1979 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1980 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1982 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1983 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1984 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1986 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1989 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1990 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1992 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1993 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1995 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1996 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1998 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1999 all command-line arguments.
2001 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
2003 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
2005 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
2006 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
2008 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
2010 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
2011 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
2012 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
2013 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
2014 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
2016 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
2017 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
2019 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
2020 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
2021 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
2022 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
2024 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
2026 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
2030 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
2031 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
2033 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
2034 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
2036 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
2037 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
2039 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
2040 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
2042 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
2043 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
2045 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
2047 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
2048 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
2049 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
2052 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
2054 ** Build-related bug fixes
2056 installing .mo files would fail
2059 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
2063 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
2065 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
2068 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
2072 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
2073 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
2077 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
2079 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
2080 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
2082 ** Deprecated options
2084 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
2085 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
2087 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
2091 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
2093 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
2094 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
2095 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
2096 conforming to older POSIX versions.
2098 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
2101 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
2107 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
2112 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
2114 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
2116 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
2117 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
2118 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
2120 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
2121 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
2122 problematic usages. These include:
2124 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
2125 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
2126 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
2127 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
2128 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
2129 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
2130 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
2131 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
2132 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
2134 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
2135 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
2137 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
2138 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
2139 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
2140 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
2142 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
2143 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
2144 between binary and text files.
2146 The following programs now always use text input/output:
2150 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
2154 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
2155 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
2157 head tac tail tee tr
2158 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
2160 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
2161 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
2163 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2164 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2165 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2167 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2169 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2171 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2172 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2173 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2177 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2179 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2180 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2182 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2183 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2184 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2188 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2189 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2193 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2194 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2195 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2199 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2200 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2204 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2206 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2208 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2212 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2213 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2214 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2216 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2217 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2218 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2219 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2220 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2222 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2226 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2227 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2228 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2230 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2232 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2233 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2234 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2235 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2237 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2239 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2240 rather than silently wrapping around.
2242 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2243 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2245 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2246 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2248 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2249 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2250 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2251 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2253 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2255 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2257 ** Improved robustness
2259 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2260 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2261 no matter how large the result.
2263 ** Improved portability
2265 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2266 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2268 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2270 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2271 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2272 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2274 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2275 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2279 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2280 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2282 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2284 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2285 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2286 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2287 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2289 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2290 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2292 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2293 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2294 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2296 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2298 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2299 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2301 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2302 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2304 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2306 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2307 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2309 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2310 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2312 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2313 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2314 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2316 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2318 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2320 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2324 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2326 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2327 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2328 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2330 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2331 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2333 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2334 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2335 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2337 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2338 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2340 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2341 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2342 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2343 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2345 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2346 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2348 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2349 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2350 the file system does not support it.
2352 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2354 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2355 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2357 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2359 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2360 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2362 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2363 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2364 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2365 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2367 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2368 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2371 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2372 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2373 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2374 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2376 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2377 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2378 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2379 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2381 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2382 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2384 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2386 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2387 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2388 reporting incorrect results.
2392 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2393 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2395 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2398 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2400 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2401 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2403 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2404 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2406 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2409 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2410 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2411 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2412 the file name does not look like a page range.
2414 printf has several changes:
2416 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2417 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2419 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2420 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2421 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2423 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2424 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2427 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2428 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2430 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2431 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2433 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2435 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2436 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2438 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2440 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2442 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2443 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2444 when first encountering the directory.
2448 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2449 output; POSIX requires this.
2451 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2452 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2454 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2456 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2457 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2459 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2460 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2462 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2463 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2464 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2465 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2466 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2467 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2468 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2470 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2471 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2472 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2474 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2475 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2477 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2479 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2481 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2482 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2483 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2484 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2486 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2490 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2491 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2492 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2493 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2494 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2496 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2497 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2498 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2500 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2501 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2503 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2504 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2506 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2507 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2508 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2509 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2510 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2512 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2513 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2515 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2516 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2518 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2520 nocreat do not create the output file
2521 excl fail if the output file already exists
2522 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2523 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2525 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2527 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2528 direct use direct I/O for data
2529 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2530 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2531 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2532 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2533 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2535 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2537 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2538 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2541 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2542 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2543 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2544 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2545 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2546 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2548 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2549 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2551 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2554 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2556 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2558 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2559 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2561 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2562 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2563 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2565 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2566 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2567 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2569 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2571 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2572 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2574 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2575 for compatibility with bash.
2577 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2579 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2580 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2581 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2582 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2584 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2585 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2587 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2588 ls supports TABSIZE.
2589 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2590 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2591 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2593 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2596 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2598 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2599 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2600 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2601 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2602 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2603 an offset, not as a file name.
2605 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2606 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2608 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2609 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2611 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2612 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2614 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2615 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2616 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2618 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2619 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2621 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2622 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2626 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2628 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2630 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2634 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2635 or more arguments between partitions.
2637 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2638 holes in the destination.
2640 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2641 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2642 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2643 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2644 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2645 terminates immediately.
2647 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2649 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2651 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2652 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2653 not the empty string.
2655 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2656 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2660 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2661 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2662 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2665 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2672 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2676 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2677 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2679 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2680 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2682 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2683 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2684 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2687 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2691 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2692 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2694 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2695 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2697 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2698 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2699 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2701 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2703 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2706 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2708 ** Configuration option
2710 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2711 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2715 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2716 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2720 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2721 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2722 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2725 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2726 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2727 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2728 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2729 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2730 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2731 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2734 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2738 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2739 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2740 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2742 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2743 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2745 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2747 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2748 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2749 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2750 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2752 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2754 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2755 not just the ones that reference directories
2757 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2758 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2760 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2761 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2762 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2764 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2765 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2766 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2767 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2768 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2769 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2771 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2776 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2777 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2779 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2781 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2783 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2785 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2786 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2788 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2789 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2791 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2793 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2797 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2799 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2801 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2802 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2803 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2804 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2805 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2807 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2808 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2810 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2811 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2813 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2814 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2816 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2817 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2818 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2822 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2823 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2824 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2825 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2826 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2827 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2828 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2829 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2830 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2831 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2832 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2833 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2834 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2835 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2837 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2839 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2840 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2842 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2844 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2846 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2847 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2849 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2851 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2852 without a trailing newline.
2854 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2855 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2857 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2860 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2864 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2866 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2868 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2869 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2870 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2871 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2873 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2875 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2876 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2877 be printed without leading spaces.
2879 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2880 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2885 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2886 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2887 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2889 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2891 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2892 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2894 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2895 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2897 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2898 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2900 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2902 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2904 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2906 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2907 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2909 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2911 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2913 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2914 byte offsets are specified.
2917 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2920 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2923 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2924 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2925 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2926 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2927 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2928 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2929 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2930 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2931 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2932 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2933 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2934 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2935 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2936 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2937 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2938 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2939 directory where M has write access.
2940 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2941 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2942 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2945 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2946 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2947 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2948 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2949 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2950 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2951 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2952 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2953 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2954 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2955 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2956 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2957 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2958 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2959 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2960 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2961 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2962 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2963 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2964 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2965 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2966 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2967 appeared one additional time.
2969 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2970 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2971 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2972 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2975 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2976 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2977 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2978 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2979 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2980 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2981 if there were more than 338.
2983 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2984 - false --help now exits nonzero
2987 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2988 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2989 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2990 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2993 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2994 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2995 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2996 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2997 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
3000 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
3001 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
3002 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
3003 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
3004 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
3005 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
3006 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3009 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
3010 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
3011 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
3012 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
3013 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
3014 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
3016 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3017 under certain unusual conditions
3018 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
3019 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
3022 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3023 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
3024 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
3025 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
3026 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
3027 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
3028 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
3029 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
3030 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
3031 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
3032 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
3033 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
3034 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
3035 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
3036 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
3037 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
3040 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
3041 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
3044 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
3045 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
3046 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
3047 involving hard-linked directories
3048 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
3049 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
3050 character-special and block files
3053 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
3054 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
3055 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
3056 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
3057 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
3058 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
3059 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
3060 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
3061 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
3063 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
3064 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
3065 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
3066 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
3067 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
3068 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
3069 specified on the command line.
3070 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
3071 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
3072 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
3073 the first file untouched.
3074 * readlink: new program
3075 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
3076 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
3077 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
3078 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
3079 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
3080 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
3083 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
3084 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
3085 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
3086 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
3087 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
3088 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
3089 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
3090 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
3091 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
3092 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
3093 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
3094 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
3096 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
3097 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
3098 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
3100 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
3101 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
3102 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
3103 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
3104 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
3105 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
3106 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
3107 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
3110 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
3111 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
3114 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
3115 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
3116 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
3117 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
3118 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
3119 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
3120 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
3123 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
3124 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
3126 ========================================================================
3127 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
3128 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3131 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
3133 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3134 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
3135 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
3136 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
3137 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
3138 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
3139 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
3140 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
3141 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
3142 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
3143 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
3144 The old options will continue to work for a while.
3146 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
3147 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
3148 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
3149 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
3151 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
3154 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
3156 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
3157 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
3158 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
3159 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
3160 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
3161 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
3162 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3165 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3166 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3167 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3168 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3169 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
3170 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3171 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
3172 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3173 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3174 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3175 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
3176 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
3177 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3178 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3179 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3180 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3182 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3183 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3185 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3186 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3187 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3188 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3189 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3190 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3192 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3193 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3194 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3195 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3196 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3197 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3198 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3200 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3201 the source files in the following example:
3202 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3203 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3204 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3205 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3206 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3207 links between source files with --preserve=links
3208 * cp accepts new options:
3209 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3210 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3211 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3212 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3213 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3214 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3215 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3216 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
3217 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3219 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3220 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3221 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3222 even though it's older than dest.
3223 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3224 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3225 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3226 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3227 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3229 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3230 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3231 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3232 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3233 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3234 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3235 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3237 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3238 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3239 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3241 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3242 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3243 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3244 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3245 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3246 This is the default.
3248 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3249 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3250 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3251 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3252 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3254 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3257 ========================================================================
3258 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3259 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3262 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3263 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3265 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3266 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3267 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3268 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3269 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3271 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3272 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3273 that specifies a non-directory
3276 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3277 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3278 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3279 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3280 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3281 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3282 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3283 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3284 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3285 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3286 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3287 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3288 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3289 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3290 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3291 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3292 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3293 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3294 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3295 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3296 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3297 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3298 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3299 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3301 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3302 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3303 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3305 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3307 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3308 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3310 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3311 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3312 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3313 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3314 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3316 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3317 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3318 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3319 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3320 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3322 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3324 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3325 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3326 * still more portability fixes
3327 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3328 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3330 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3332 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3334 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3336 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3337 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3338 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3339 there is any time remaining
3340 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3342 ========================================================================
3343 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3344 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3346 This package began as the union of the following:
3347 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3349 ========================================================================
3351 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3353 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3354 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3355 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3356 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3357 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3358 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.