1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2004-03-21) [unstable]
7 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
9 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
10 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic points to, instead.
11 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
13 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
14 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
16 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
17 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
18 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
20 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
21 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
23 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
24 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
25 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
26 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
28 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
29 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
31 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
32 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
33 the file system does not support it.
35 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
37 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
39 The --date (-d) option of "date" and "touch" is now pickier about date values:
40 it rejects dates like "January 32" that have out-of-range components.
41 Also, date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
42 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
43 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
45 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
47 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
48 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
49 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
50 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
52 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
53 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
54 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
55 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
57 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
58 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
59 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
60 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
62 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
63 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
65 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
67 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
68 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
69 reporting incorrect results.
73 If it fails to lower the nice value due to lack of permissions,
74 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
76 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current nice
77 value happens to be -1.
79 It no longer assumes that nice values range from -20 through 19.
81 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nice values to the
82 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
84 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
85 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
87 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
88 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
89 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
90 the file name does not look like a page range.
92 printf has several changes:
94 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
95 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
97 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
98 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
99 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
101 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
102 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
105 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
106 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
108 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
109 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
111 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
112 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
114 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
116 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
118 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
119 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
120 when first encountering the directory.
122 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
123 output; POSIX requires this.
125 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
126 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
128 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
129 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
130 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
131 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
132 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
133 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
134 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
136 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
137 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
138 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
140 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
141 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
143 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
145 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
147 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
148 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
149 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
150 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
152 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
156 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
157 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
158 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
159 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
160 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
162 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
163 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
164 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
166 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
167 is longer than PATH_MAX.
169 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
170 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
172 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
173 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
174 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
175 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
176 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
178 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
180 nocreat do not create the output file
181 excl fail if the output file already exists
182 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
183 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
185 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
187 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
188 direct use direct I/O for data
189 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
190 sync likewise, but also for metadata
191 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
192 nofollow do not follow symlinks
194 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
196 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
197 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
200 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
201 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
202 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
203 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
204 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
205 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
207 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
208 list of NUL-terminated file names.
210 `date -d' and `touch -d' now accept integer counts of seconds since
211 1970 when prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents
212 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
214 `date -d', `date -f' and `touch -d' now handle fractional time
215 stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
217 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
218 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
220 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
221 for compatibility with bash.
223 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
224 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
225 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
226 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
228 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
229 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
231 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
233 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
234 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
235 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
237 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
240 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
242 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
243 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
244 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
245 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
246 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
247 an offset, not as a file name.
249 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
250 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
252 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
253 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
255 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
256 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
258 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
259 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
260 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
262 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
263 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
267 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
269 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
271 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
275 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
276 or more arguments between partitions.
278 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
279 holes in the destination.
281 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
282 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
283 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
284 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
285 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
286 terminates immediately.
288 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
290 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
292 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
293 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
294 not the empty string.
296 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
297 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
301 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
302 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
303 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
306 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
313 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
317 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
318 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
320 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
321 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
323 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
324 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
325 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
328 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
332 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
333 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
335 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
336 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
338 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
339 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
340 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
342 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
344 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
347 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
349 ** Configuration option
351 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
352 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
356 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
357 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
361 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
362 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
363 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
366 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
367 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
368 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
369 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
370 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
371 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
374 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
378 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
379 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
380 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
382 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
383 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
385 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
387 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
388 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
389 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
390 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
392 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
394 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
395 not just the ones that reference directories
397 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
398 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
400 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
401 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
402 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
404 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
405 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
406 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
407 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
408 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
409 ragged when a datum was too wide.
411 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
416 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
417 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
419 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
421 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
423 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
425 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
426 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
428 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
429 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
431 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
433 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
437 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
439 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
441 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
442 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
443 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
444 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
445 resolution is the best we can do right now.
447 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
448 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
450 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
451 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
453 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
454 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
456 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
457 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
458 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
462 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
463 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
464 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
465 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
466 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
467 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
468 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
469 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
470 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
471 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
472 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
473 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
474 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
475 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
477 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
479 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
480 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
482 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
484 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
486 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
487 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
489 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
491 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
492 without a trailing newline.
494 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
495 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
497 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
500 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
504 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
506 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
508 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
509 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
510 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
511 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
513 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
515 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
516 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
517 be printed without leading spaces.
519 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
520 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
525 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
526 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
527 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
529 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
531 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
532 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
534 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
535 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
537 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
538 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
540 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
542 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
544 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
546 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
547 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
549 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
551 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
553 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
554 byte offsets are specified.
557 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
560 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
563 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
564 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
565 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
566 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
567 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
568 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
569 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
570 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
571 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
572 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
573 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
574 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
575 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
576 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
577 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
578 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
579 directory where M has write access.
580 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
581 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
582 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
585 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
586 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
587 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
588 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
589 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
590 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
591 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
592 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
593 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
594 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
595 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
596 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
597 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
598 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
599 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
600 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
601 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
602 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
603 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
604 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
605 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
606 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
607 appeared one additional time.
609 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
610 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
611 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
612 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
615 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
616 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
617 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
618 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
619 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
620 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
621 if there were more than 338.
623 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
624 - false --help now exits nonzero
627 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
628 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
629 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
630 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
633 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
634 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
635 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
636 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
637 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
640 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
641 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
642 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
643 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
644 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
645 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
646 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
649 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
650 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
651 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
652 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
653 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
654 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
656 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
657 under certain unusual conditions
658 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
659 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
662 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
663 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
664 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
665 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
666 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
667 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
668 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
669 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
670 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
671 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
672 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
673 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
674 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
675 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
676 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
677 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
680 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
681 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
684 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
685 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
686 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
687 involving hard-linked directories
688 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
689 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
690 character-special and block files
693 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
694 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
695 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
696 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
697 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
698 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
699 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
700 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
701 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
703 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
704 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
705 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
706 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
707 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
708 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
709 specified on the command line.
710 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
711 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
712 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
713 the first file untouched.
714 * readlink: new program
715 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
716 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
717 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
718 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
719 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
720 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
723 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
724 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
725 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
726 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
727 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
728 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
729 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
730 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
731 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
732 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
733 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
734 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
736 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
737 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
738 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
740 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
741 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
742 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
743 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
744 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
745 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
746 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
747 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
750 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
751 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
754 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
755 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
756 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
757 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
758 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
759 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
760 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
763 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
764 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
766 ========================================================================
767 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
768 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
771 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
773 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
774 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
775 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
776 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
777 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
778 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
779 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
780 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
781 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
782 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
783 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
784 The old options will continue to work for a while.
786 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
787 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
788 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
789 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
791 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
794 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
796 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
797 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
798 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
799 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
800 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
801 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
802 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
805 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
806 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
807 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
808 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
809 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
810 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
811 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
812 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
813 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
814 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
815 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
816 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
817 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
818 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
819 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
820 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
822 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
823 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
825 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
826 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
827 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
828 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
829 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
830 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
832 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
833 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
834 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
835 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
836 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
837 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
838 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
840 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
841 the source files in the following example:
842 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
843 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
844 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
845 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
846 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
847 links between source files with --preserve=links
848 * cp accepts new options:
849 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
850 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
851 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
852 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
853 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
854 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
855 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
856 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
857 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
859 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
860 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
861 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
862 even though it's older than dest.
863 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
864 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
865 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
866 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
867 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
869 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
870 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
871 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
872 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
873 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
874 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
875 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
877 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
878 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
879 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
881 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
882 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
883 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
884 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
885 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
888 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
889 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
890 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
891 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
892 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
894 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
897 ========================================================================
898 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
899 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
902 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
903 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
905 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
906 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
907 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
908 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
909 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
911 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
912 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
913 that specifies a non-directory
916 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
917 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
918 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
919 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
920 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
921 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
922 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
923 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
924 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
925 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
926 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
927 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
928 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
929 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
930 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
931 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
932 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
933 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
934 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
935 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
936 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
937 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
938 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
939 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
941 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
942 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
943 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
945 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
947 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
948 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
950 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
951 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
952 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
953 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
954 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
956 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
957 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
958 required support; from Bruno Haible.
959 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
960 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
962 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
964 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
965 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
966 * still more portability fixes
967 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
968 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
970 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
972 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
974 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
976 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
977 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
978 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
979 there is any time remaining
980 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
982 ========================================================================
983 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
984 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
986 This package began as the union of the following:
987 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
projects / platform / upstream / coreutils.git / blob