1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (????-??-??) [beta]
7 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
8 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
12 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
13 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
15 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
16 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
18 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
19 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
23 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
24 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
25 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
28 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
32 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
34 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
35 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
36 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
38 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
39 with no USERNAME argument.
41 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
42 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
43 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
45 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
46 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
47 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
48 number of fields for some inputs.
50 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
51 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
53 ** Changes in behavior
55 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
56 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
59 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
63 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
65 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
66 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
67 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
68 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
70 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
71 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
73 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
74 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
76 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
77 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
79 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
80 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
81 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
82 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
84 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
85 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
86 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
87 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
88 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
89 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
91 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
92 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
94 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
95 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
96 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
98 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
99 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
101 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
102 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
104 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
105 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
106 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
107 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
109 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
110 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
112 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
113 in more cases when a directory is empty.
115 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
116 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
117 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
121 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
122 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
124 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
125 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
126 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
127 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
131 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
132 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
134 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
136 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
140 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
141 which have negative errno values.
145 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
149 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
153 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
154 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
157 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
161 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
162 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
163 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
165 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
166 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
167 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
168 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
172 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
173 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
174 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
175 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
178 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
182 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
184 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
185 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
186 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
189 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
193 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
194 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
196 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
198 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
200 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
202 ** Programs no longer installed by default
206 ** Changes in behavior
208 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
209 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
211 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
212 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
214 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
215 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
216 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
220 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
221 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
222 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
223 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
224 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
225 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
226 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
227 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
228 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
229 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
230 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
232 The following commands and options now support the standard size
233 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
234 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
237 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
240 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
241 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
242 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
244 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
245 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
246 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
251 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
252 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
253 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
254 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
256 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
257 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
258 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
259 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
260 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
261 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
262 of "make check" fail.
264 ** Remove deprecated options
266 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
267 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
268 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
269 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
270 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
272 ** Improved robustness
274 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
275 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
276 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
277 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
278 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
279 loss of the contents of a/f.
281 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
282 in its 35-colon command-line argument
286 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
287 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
288 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
290 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
291 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
292 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
293 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
295 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
296 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
297 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
298 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
299 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
300 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
301 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
302 destination is a symlink.
304 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
306 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
307 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
309 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
310 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
312 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
314 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
315 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
317 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
318 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
320 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
323 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
324 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
326 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
327 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
329 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
330 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
331 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
332 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
334 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
335 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
336 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
338 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
339 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
340 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
342 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
343 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
344 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
345 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
347 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
348 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
349 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
351 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
352 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
354 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
355 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
357 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
359 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
360 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
361 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
363 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
364 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
366 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
367 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
369 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
370 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
372 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
373 [present in the original version]
376 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
380 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
382 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
383 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
384 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
386 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
387 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
389 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
393 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
394 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
396 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
397 support but with insufficient /proc support.
399 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
400 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
402 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
403 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
404 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
405 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
406 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
407 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
409 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
410 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
413 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
414 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
416 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
419 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
420 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
421 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
423 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
424 directory is unreadable.
426 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
427 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
428 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
430 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
431 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
432 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
433 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
434 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
437 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
438 Before it would print nothing.
440 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
442 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
443 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
444 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
445 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
446 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
447 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
448 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
449 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
451 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
455 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
456 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
457 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
459 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
460 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
461 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
462 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
465 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
469 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
470 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
471 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
472 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
473 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
474 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
475 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
477 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
478 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
479 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
480 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
481 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
482 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
483 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
484 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
486 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
487 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
488 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
491 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
495 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
496 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
498 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
499 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
500 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
502 ** Improved robustness
504 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
505 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
506 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
509 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
513 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
514 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
515 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
516 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
517 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
519 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
523 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
526 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
530 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
531 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
532 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
533 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
535 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
536 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
538 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
539 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
540 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
543 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
545 ** Improved robustness
547 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
548 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
550 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
551 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
552 or NFS-mounted partition.
554 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
555 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
559 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
560 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
561 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
562 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
563 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
564 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
566 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
567 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
569 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
570 or neglect to report file removal.
572 For the "groups" command:
574 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
575 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
577 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
579 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
581 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
585 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
586 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
589 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
591 ** Changes in behavior
593 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
594 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
595 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
596 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
598 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
599 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
600 a final `./' or `../' component.
602 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
603 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
606 ** Infrastructure changes
608 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
609 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
610 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
611 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
615 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
618 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
619 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
620 dirent.d_type support.
622 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
623 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
625 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
626 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
627 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
628 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
631 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
633 ** Changes in behavior
635 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
639 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
640 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
644 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
645 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
646 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
648 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
649 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
651 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
652 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
654 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
656 ** Improved robustness
658 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
659 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
660 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
662 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
663 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
666 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
667 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
669 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
670 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
672 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
673 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
675 ** Changes in behavior
677 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
678 where the two are distinct.
680 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
681 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
682 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
683 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
684 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
685 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
686 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
687 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
688 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
689 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
690 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
691 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
692 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
693 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
694 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
695 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
696 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
698 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
699 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
700 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
702 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
703 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
704 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
705 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
708 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
709 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
713 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
714 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
715 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
716 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
718 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
719 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
720 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
722 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
723 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
724 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
725 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
726 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
729 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
730 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
732 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
733 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
734 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
735 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
737 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
738 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
739 successful and the output is easier to parse.
741 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
742 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
743 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
744 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
746 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
747 and sticky) with the -m option.
749 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
750 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
751 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
752 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
753 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
755 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
756 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
758 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
762 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
763 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
764 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
765 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
767 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
769 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
771 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
772 silently ignoring one of them.
774 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
775 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
776 containing this change was 5.92.
778 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
779 automatically newline terminated.
781 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
782 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
783 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
784 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
787 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
788 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
789 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
792 ** Scheduled for removal
794 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
795 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
797 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
798 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
799 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
800 command to unlink a directory.
802 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
803 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
804 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
805 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
809 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
810 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
811 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
812 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
813 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
814 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
818 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
819 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
821 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
823 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
824 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
825 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
827 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
828 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
831 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
832 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
834 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
835 list directories before files.
837 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
838 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
839 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
840 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
843 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
845 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
847 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
848 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
849 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
851 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
852 list of NUL-terminated file names.
856 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
857 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
858 usually printing nothing.
860 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
862 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
863 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
864 them with hard-linked directories.
866 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
867 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
868 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
870 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
871 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
872 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
874 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
877 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
878 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
880 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
881 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
883 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
884 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
886 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
887 all command-line arguments.
889 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
891 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
893 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
894 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
896 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
898 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
899 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
900 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
901 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
902 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
904 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
905 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
907 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
908 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
909 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
910 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
912 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
914 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
918 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
919 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
921 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
922 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
924 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
925 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
927 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
928 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
930 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
931 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
933 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
935 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
936 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
937 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
940 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
942 ** Build-related bug fixes
944 installing .mo files would fail
947 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
951 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
953 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
956 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
960 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
961 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
965 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
967 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
968 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
970 ** Deprecated options
972 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
973 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
975 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
979 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
981 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
982 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
983 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
984 conforming to older POSIX versions.
986 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
989 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
995 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1000 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1002 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1004 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1005 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1006 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1008 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1009 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1010 problematic usages. These include:
1012 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1013 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1014 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1015 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1016 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1017 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1018 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1019 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1020 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1022 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1023 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1025 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1026 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1027 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1028 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1030 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1031 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1032 between binary and text files.
1034 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1038 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1042 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1043 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1045 head tac tail tee tr
1046 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1048 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1049 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1051 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1052 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1053 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1055 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1057 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1059 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1060 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1061 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1065 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1067 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1068 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1070 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1071 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1072 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1076 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1077 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1081 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1082 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1083 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1087 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1088 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1092 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1094 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1096 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1100 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1101 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1102 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1104 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1105 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1106 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1107 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1108 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1110 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1114 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1115 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1116 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1118 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1120 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1121 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1122 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1123 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1125 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1127 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1128 rather than silently wrapping around.
1130 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1131 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1133 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1134 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1136 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1137 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1138 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1139 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1141 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1143 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1145 ** Improved robustness
1147 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1148 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1149 no matter how large the result.
1151 ** Improved portability
1153 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1154 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1156 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1158 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1159 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1160 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1162 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1163 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1167 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1168 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1170 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1172 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1173 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1174 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1175 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1177 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1178 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1180 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1181 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1182 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1184 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1186 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1187 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1189 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1190 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1192 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1194 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1195 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1197 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1198 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1200 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1201 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1202 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1204 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1206 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1208 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1212 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1214 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1215 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1216 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1218 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1219 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1221 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1222 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1223 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1225 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1226 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1228 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1229 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1230 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1231 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1233 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1234 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1236 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1237 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1238 the file system does not support it.
1240 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1242 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1243 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1245 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1247 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1248 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1250 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1251 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1252 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1253 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1255 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1256 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1259 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1260 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1261 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1262 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1264 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1265 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1266 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1267 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1269 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1270 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1272 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1274 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1275 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1276 reporting incorrect results.
1280 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1281 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1283 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1286 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1288 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1289 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1291 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1292 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1294 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1297 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1298 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1299 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1300 the file name does not look like a page range.
1302 printf has several changes:
1304 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1305 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1307 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1308 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1309 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1311 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1312 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1315 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1316 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1318 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1319 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1321 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1323 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1324 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1326 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1328 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1330 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1331 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1332 when first encountering the directory.
1336 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1337 output; POSIX requires this.
1339 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1340 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1342 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1344 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1345 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1347 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1348 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1350 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1351 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1352 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1353 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1354 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1355 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1356 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1358 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1359 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1360 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1362 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1363 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1365 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1367 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1369 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1370 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1371 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1372 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1374 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1378 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1379 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1380 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1381 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1382 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1384 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1385 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1386 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1388 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1389 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1391 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1392 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1394 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1395 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1396 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1397 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1398 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1400 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1401 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1403 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1404 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1406 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1408 nocreat do not create the output file
1409 excl fail if the output file already exists
1410 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1411 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1413 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1415 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1416 direct use direct I/O for data
1417 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1418 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1419 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1420 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1421 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1423 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1425 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1426 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1429 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1430 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1431 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1432 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1433 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1434 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1436 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1437 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1439 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1442 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1444 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1446 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1447 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1449 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1450 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1451 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1453 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1454 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1455 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1457 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1459 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1460 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1462 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1463 for compatibility with bash.
1465 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1467 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1468 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1469 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1470 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1472 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1473 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1475 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1476 ls supports TABSIZE.
1477 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1478 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1479 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1481 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1484 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1486 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1487 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1488 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1489 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1490 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1491 an offset, not as a file name.
1493 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1494 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1496 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1497 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1499 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1500 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1502 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1503 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1504 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1506 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1507 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1509 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1510 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1514 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1516 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1518 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1522 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1523 or more arguments between partitions.
1525 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1526 holes in the destination.
1528 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1529 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1530 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1531 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1532 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1533 terminates immediately.
1535 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1537 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1539 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1540 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1541 not the empty string.
1543 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1544 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1548 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1549 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1550 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1553 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1560 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1564 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1565 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1567 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1568 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1570 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1571 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1572 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1575 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1579 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1580 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1582 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1583 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1585 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1586 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1587 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1589 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1591 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1594 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1596 ** Configuration option
1598 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1599 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1603 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1604 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1608 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1609 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1610 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1613 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1614 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1615 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1616 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1617 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1618 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1619 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1622 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1626 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1627 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1628 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1630 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1631 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1633 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1635 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1636 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1637 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1638 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1640 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1642 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1643 not just the ones that reference directories
1645 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1646 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1648 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1649 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1650 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1652 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1653 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1654 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1655 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1656 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1657 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1659 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1664 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1665 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1667 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1669 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1671 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1673 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1674 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1676 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1677 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1679 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1681 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1685 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1687 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1689 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1690 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1691 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1692 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1693 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1695 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1696 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1698 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1699 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1701 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1702 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1704 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1705 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1706 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1710 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1711 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1712 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1713 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1714 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1715 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1716 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1717 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1718 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1719 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1720 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1721 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1722 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1723 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1725 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1727 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1728 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1730 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1732 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1734 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1735 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1737 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1739 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1740 without a trailing newline.
1742 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1743 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1745 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1748 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1752 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1754 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1756 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1757 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1758 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1759 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1761 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1763 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1764 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1765 be printed without leading spaces.
1767 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1768 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1773 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1774 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1775 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1777 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1779 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1780 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1782 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1783 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1785 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1786 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1788 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1790 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1792 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1794 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1795 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1797 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1799 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1801 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1802 byte offsets are specified.
1805 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1808 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1811 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1812 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1813 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1814 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1815 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1816 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1817 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1818 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1819 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1820 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1821 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1822 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1823 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1824 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1825 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1826 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1827 directory where M has write access.
1828 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1829 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1830 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1833 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1834 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1835 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1836 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1837 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1838 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1839 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1840 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1841 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1842 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1843 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1844 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1845 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1846 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1847 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1848 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1849 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1850 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1851 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1852 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1853 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1854 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1855 appeared one additional time.
1857 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1858 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1859 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1860 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1863 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1864 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1865 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1866 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1867 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1868 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1869 if there were more than 338.
1871 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1872 - false --help now exits nonzero
1875 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1876 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1877 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1878 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1881 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1882 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1883 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1884 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1885 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1888 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1889 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1890 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1891 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1892 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1893 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1894 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1897 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1898 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1899 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1900 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1901 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1902 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1904 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1905 under certain unusual conditions
1906 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1907 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1910 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1911 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1912 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1913 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1914 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1915 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1916 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1917 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1918 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1919 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1920 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1921 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1922 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1923 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1924 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1925 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1928 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1929 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1932 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1933 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1934 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1935 involving hard-linked directories
1936 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1937 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1938 character-special and block files
1941 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1942 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1943 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1944 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1945 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1946 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1947 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1948 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1949 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1951 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1952 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1953 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1954 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1955 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1956 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1957 specified on the command line.
1958 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1959 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1960 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1961 the first file untouched.
1962 * readlink: new program
1963 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1964 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1965 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1966 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1967 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1968 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1971 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1972 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1973 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1974 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1975 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1976 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1977 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1978 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1979 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1980 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1981 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1982 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1984 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1985 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1986 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1988 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1989 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1990 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1991 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1992 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1993 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1994 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1995 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1998 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1999 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2002 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2003 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2004 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2005 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2006 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2007 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2008 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2011 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2012 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2014 ========================================================================
2015 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2016 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2019 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2021 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2022 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2023 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2024 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2025 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2026 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2027 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2028 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2029 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2030 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2031 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2032 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2034 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2035 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2036 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2037 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2039 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2042 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2044 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2045 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2046 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2047 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2048 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2049 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2050 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2053 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2054 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2055 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2056 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2057 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2058 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2059 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2060 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2061 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2062 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2063 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2064 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2065 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2066 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2067 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2068 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2070 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2071 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2073 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2074 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2075 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2076 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2077 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2078 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2080 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2081 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2082 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2083 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2084 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2085 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2086 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2088 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2089 the source files in the following example:
2090 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2091 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2092 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2093 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2094 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2095 links between source files with --preserve=links
2096 * cp accepts new options:
2097 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2098 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2099 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2100 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2101 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2102 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2103 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2104 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2105 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2107 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2108 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2109 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2110 even though it's older than dest.
2111 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2112 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2113 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2114 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2115 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2117 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2118 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2119 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2120 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2121 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2122 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2123 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2125 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2126 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2127 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2129 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2130 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2131 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2132 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2133 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2134 This is the default.
2136 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2137 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2138 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2139 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2140 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2142 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2145 ========================================================================
2146 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2147 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2150 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2151 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2153 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2154 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2155 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2156 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2157 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2159 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2160 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2161 that specifies a non-directory
2164 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2165 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2166 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2167 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2168 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2169 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2170 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2171 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2172 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2173 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2174 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2175 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2176 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2177 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2178 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2179 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2180 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2181 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2182 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2183 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2184 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2185 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2186 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2187 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2189 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2190 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2191 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2193 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2195 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2196 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2198 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2199 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2200 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2201 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2202 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2204 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2205 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2206 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2207 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2208 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2210 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2212 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2213 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2214 * still more portability fixes
2215 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2216 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2218 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2220 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2222 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2224 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2225 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2226 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2227 there is any time remaining
2228 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2230 ========================================================================
2231 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2232 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2234 This package began as the union of the following:
2235 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2237 ========================================================================
2239 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2242 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2243 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2244 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2245 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2246 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2247 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.