1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (????-??-??) [beta]
7 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
8 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
11 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
15 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
17 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
18 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
19 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
21 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
22 with no USERNAME argument.
24 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
25 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
26 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
28 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
29 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
30 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
31 number of fields for some inputs.
33 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
34 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
36 ** Changes in behavior
38 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
39 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
42 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
46 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
48 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
49 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
50 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
51 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
53 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
54 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
56 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
57 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
59 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
60 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
62 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
63 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
64 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
65 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
67 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
68 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
69 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
70 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
71 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
72 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
74 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
75 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
77 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
78 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
79 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
81 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
82 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
84 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
85 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
87 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
88 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
89 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
90 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
92 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
93 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
95 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
96 in more cases when a directory is empty.
98 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
99 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
100 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
104 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
105 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
107 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
108 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
109 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
110 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
114 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
115 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
117 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
119 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
123 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
124 which have negative errno values.
128 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
132 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
136 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
137 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
140 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
144 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
145 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
146 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
148 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
149 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
150 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
151 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
155 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
156 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
157 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
158 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
161 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
165 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
167 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
168 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
169 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
172 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
176 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
177 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
179 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
181 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
183 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
185 ** Programs no longer installed by default
189 ** Changes in behavior
191 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
192 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
194 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
195 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
197 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
198 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
199 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
203 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
204 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
205 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
206 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
207 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
208 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
209 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
210 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
211 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
212 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
213 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
215 The following commands and options now support the standard size
216 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
217 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
220 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
223 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
224 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
225 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
227 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
228 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
229 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
234 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
235 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
236 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
237 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
239 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
240 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
241 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
242 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
243 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
244 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
245 of "make check" fail.
247 ** Remove deprecated options
249 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
250 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
251 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
252 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
253 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
255 ** Improved robustness
257 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
258 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
259 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
260 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
261 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
262 loss of the contents of a/f.
264 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
265 in its 35-colon command-line argument
269 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
270 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
271 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
273 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
274 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
275 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
276 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
278 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
279 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
280 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
281 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
282 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
283 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
284 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
285 destination is a symlink.
287 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
289 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
290 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
292 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
293 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
295 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
297 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
298 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
300 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
301 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
303 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
306 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
307 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
309 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
310 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
312 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
313 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
314 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
315 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
317 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
318 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
319 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
321 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
322 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
323 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
325 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
326 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
327 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
328 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
330 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
331 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
332 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
334 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
335 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
337 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
338 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
340 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
342 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
343 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
344 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
346 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
347 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
349 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
350 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
352 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
353 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
355 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
356 [present in the original version]
359 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
363 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
365 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
366 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
367 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
369 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
370 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
372 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
376 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
377 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
379 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
380 support but with insufficient /proc support.
382 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
383 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
385 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
386 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
387 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
388 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
389 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
390 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
392 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
393 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
396 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
397 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
399 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
402 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
403 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
404 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
406 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
407 directory is unreadable.
409 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
410 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
411 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
413 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
414 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
415 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
416 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
417 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
420 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
421 Before it would print nothing.
423 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
425 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
426 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
427 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
428 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
429 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
430 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
431 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
432 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
434 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
438 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
439 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
440 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
442 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
443 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
444 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
445 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
448 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
452 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
453 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
454 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
455 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
456 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
457 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
458 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
460 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
461 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
462 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
463 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
464 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
465 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
466 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
467 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
469 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
470 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
471 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
474 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
478 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
479 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
481 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
482 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
483 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
485 ** Improved robustness
487 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
488 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
489 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
492 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
496 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
497 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
498 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
499 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
500 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
502 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
506 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
509 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
513 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
514 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
515 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
516 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
518 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
519 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
521 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
522 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
523 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
526 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
528 ** Improved robustness
530 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
531 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
533 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
534 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
535 or NFS-mounted partition.
537 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
538 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
542 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
543 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
544 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
545 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
546 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
547 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
549 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
550 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
552 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
553 or neglect to report file removal.
555 For the "groups" command:
557 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
558 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
560 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
562 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
564 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
568 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
569 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
572 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
574 ** Changes in behavior
576 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
577 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
578 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
579 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
581 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
582 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
583 a final `./' or `../' component.
585 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
586 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
589 ** Infrastructure changes
591 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
592 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
593 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
594 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
598 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
601 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
602 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
603 dirent.d_type support.
605 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
606 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
608 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
609 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
610 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
611 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
614 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
616 ** Changes in behavior
618 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
622 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
623 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
627 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
628 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
629 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
631 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
632 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
634 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
635 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
637 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
639 ** Improved robustness
641 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
642 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
643 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
645 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
646 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
649 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
650 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
652 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
653 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
655 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
656 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
658 ** Changes in behavior
660 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
661 where the two are distinct.
663 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
664 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
665 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
666 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
667 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
668 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
669 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
670 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
671 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
672 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
673 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
674 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
675 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
676 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
677 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
678 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
679 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
681 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
682 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
683 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
685 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
686 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
687 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
688 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
691 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
692 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
696 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
697 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
698 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
699 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
701 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
702 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
703 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
705 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
706 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
707 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
708 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
709 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
712 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
713 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
715 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
716 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
717 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
718 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
720 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
721 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
722 successful and the output is easier to parse.
724 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
725 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
726 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
727 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
729 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
730 and sticky) with the -m option.
732 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
733 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
734 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
735 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
736 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
738 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
739 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
741 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
745 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
746 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
747 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
748 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
750 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
752 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
754 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
755 silently ignoring one of them.
757 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
758 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
759 containing this change was 5.92.
761 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
762 automatically newline terminated.
764 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
765 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
766 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
767 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
770 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
771 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
772 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
775 ** Scheduled for removal
777 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
778 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
780 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
781 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
782 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
783 command to unlink a directory.
785 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
786 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
787 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
788 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
792 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
793 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
794 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
795 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
796 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
797 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
801 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
802 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
804 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
806 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
807 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
808 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
810 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
811 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
814 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
815 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
817 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
818 list directories before files.
820 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
821 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
822 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
823 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
826 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
828 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
830 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
831 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
832 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
834 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
835 list of NUL-terminated file names.
839 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
840 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
841 usually printing nothing.
843 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
845 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
846 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
847 them with hard-linked directories.
849 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
850 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
851 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
853 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
854 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
855 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
857 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
860 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
861 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
863 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
864 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
866 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
867 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
869 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
870 all command-line arguments.
872 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
874 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
876 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
877 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
879 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
881 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
882 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
883 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
884 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
885 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
887 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
888 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
890 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
891 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
892 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
893 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
895 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
897 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
901 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
902 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
904 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
905 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
907 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
908 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
910 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
911 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
913 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
914 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
916 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
918 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
919 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
920 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
923 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
925 ** Build-related bug fixes
927 installing .mo files would fail
930 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
934 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
936 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
939 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
943 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
944 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
948 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
950 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
951 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
953 ** Deprecated options
955 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
956 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
958 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
962 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
964 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
965 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
966 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
967 conforming to older POSIX versions.
969 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
972 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
978 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
983 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
985 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
987 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
988 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
989 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
991 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
992 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
993 problematic usages. These include:
995 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
996 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
997 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
998 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
999 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1000 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1001 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1002 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1003 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1005 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1006 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1008 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1009 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1010 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1011 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1013 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1014 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1015 between binary and text files.
1017 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1021 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1025 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1026 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1028 head tac tail tee tr
1029 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1031 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1032 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1034 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1035 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1036 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1038 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1040 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1042 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1043 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1044 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1048 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1050 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1051 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1053 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1054 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1055 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1059 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1060 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1064 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1065 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1066 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1070 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1071 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1075 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1077 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1079 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1083 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1084 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1085 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1087 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1088 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1089 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1090 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1091 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1093 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1097 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1098 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1099 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1101 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1103 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1104 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1105 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1106 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1108 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1110 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1111 rather than silently wrapping around.
1113 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1114 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1116 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1117 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1119 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1120 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1121 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1122 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1124 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1126 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1128 ** Improved robustness
1130 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1131 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1132 no matter how large the result.
1134 ** Improved portability
1136 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1137 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1139 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1141 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1142 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1143 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1145 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1146 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1150 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1151 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1153 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1155 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1156 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1157 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1158 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1160 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1161 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1163 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1164 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1165 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1167 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1169 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1170 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1172 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1173 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1175 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1177 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1178 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1180 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1181 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1183 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1184 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1185 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1187 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1189 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1191 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1195 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1197 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1198 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1199 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1201 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1202 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1204 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1205 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1206 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1208 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1209 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1211 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1212 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1213 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1214 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1216 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1217 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1219 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1220 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1221 the file system does not support it.
1223 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1225 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1226 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1228 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1230 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1231 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1233 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1234 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1235 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1236 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1238 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1239 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1242 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1243 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1244 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1245 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1247 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1248 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1249 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1250 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1252 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1253 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1255 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1257 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1258 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1259 reporting incorrect results.
1263 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1264 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1266 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1269 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1271 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1272 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1274 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1275 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1277 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1280 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1281 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1282 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1283 the file name does not look like a page range.
1285 printf has several changes:
1287 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1288 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1290 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1291 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1292 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1294 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1295 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1298 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1299 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1301 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1302 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1304 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1306 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1307 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1309 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1311 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1313 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1314 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1315 when first encountering the directory.
1319 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1320 output; POSIX requires this.
1322 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1323 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1325 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1327 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1328 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1330 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1331 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1333 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1334 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1335 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1336 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1337 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1338 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1339 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1341 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1342 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1343 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1345 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1346 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1348 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1350 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1352 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1353 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1354 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1355 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1357 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1361 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1362 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1363 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1364 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1365 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1367 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1368 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1369 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1371 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1372 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1374 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1375 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1377 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1378 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1379 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1380 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1381 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1383 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1384 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1386 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1387 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1389 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1391 nocreat do not create the output file
1392 excl fail if the output file already exists
1393 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1394 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1396 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1398 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1399 direct use direct I/O for data
1400 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1401 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1402 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1403 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1404 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1406 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1408 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1409 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1412 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1413 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1414 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1415 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1416 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1417 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1419 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1420 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1422 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1425 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1427 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1429 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1430 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1432 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1433 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1434 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1436 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1437 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1438 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1440 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1442 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1443 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1445 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1446 for compatibility with bash.
1448 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1450 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1451 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1452 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1453 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1455 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1456 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1458 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1459 ls supports TABSIZE.
1460 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1461 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1462 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1464 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1467 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1469 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1470 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1471 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1472 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1473 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1474 an offset, not as a file name.
1476 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1477 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1479 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1480 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1482 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1483 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1485 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1486 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1487 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1489 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1490 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1492 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1493 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1497 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1499 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1501 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1505 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1506 or more arguments between partitions.
1508 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1509 holes in the destination.
1511 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1512 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1513 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1514 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1515 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1516 terminates immediately.
1518 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1520 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1522 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1523 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1524 not the empty string.
1526 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1527 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1531 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1532 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1533 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1536 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1543 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1547 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1548 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1550 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1551 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1553 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1554 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1555 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1558 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1562 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1563 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1565 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1566 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1568 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1569 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1570 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1572 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1574 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1577 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1579 ** Configuration option
1581 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1582 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1586 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1587 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1591 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1592 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1593 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1596 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1597 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1598 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1599 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1600 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1601 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1602 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1605 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1609 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1610 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1611 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1613 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1614 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1616 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1618 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1619 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1620 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1621 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1623 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1625 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1626 not just the ones that reference directories
1628 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1629 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1631 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1632 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1633 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1635 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1636 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1637 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1638 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1639 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1640 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1642 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1647 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1648 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1650 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1652 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1654 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1656 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1657 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1659 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1660 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1662 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1664 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1668 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1670 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1672 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1673 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1674 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1675 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1676 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1678 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1679 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1681 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1682 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1684 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1685 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1687 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1688 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1689 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1693 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1694 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1695 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1696 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1697 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1698 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1699 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1700 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1701 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1702 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1703 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1704 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1705 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1706 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1708 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1710 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1711 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1713 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1715 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1717 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1718 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1720 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1722 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1723 without a trailing newline.
1725 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1726 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1728 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1731 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1735 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1737 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1739 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1740 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1741 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1742 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1744 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1746 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1747 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1748 be printed without leading spaces.
1750 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1751 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1756 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1757 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1758 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1760 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1762 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1763 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1765 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1766 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1768 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1769 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1771 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1773 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1775 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1777 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1778 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1780 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1782 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1784 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1785 byte offsets are specified.
1788 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1791 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1794 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1795 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1796 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1797 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1798 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1799 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1800 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1801 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1802 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1803 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1804 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1805 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1806 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1807 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1808 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1809 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1810 directory where M has write access.
1811 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1812 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1813 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1816 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1817 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1818 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1819 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1820 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1821 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1822 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1823 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1824 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1825 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1826 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1827 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1828 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1829 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1830 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1831 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1832 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1833 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1834 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1835 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1836 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1837 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1838 appeared one additional time.
1840 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1841 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1842 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1843 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1846 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1847 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1848 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1849 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1850 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1851 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1852 if there were more than 338.
1854 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1855 - false --help now exits nonzero
1858 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1859 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1860 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1861 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1864 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1865 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1866 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1867 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1868 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1871 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1872 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1873 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1874 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1875 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1876 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1877 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1880 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1881 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1882 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1883 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1884 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1885 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1887 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1888 under certain unusual conditions
1889 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1890 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1893 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1894 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1895 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1896 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1897 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1898 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1899 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1900 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1901 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1902 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1903 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1904 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1905 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1906 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1907 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1908 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1911 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1912 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1915 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1916 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1917 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1918 involving hard-linked directories
1919 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1920 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1921 character-special and block files
1924 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1925 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1926 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1927 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1928 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1929 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1930 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1931 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1932 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1934 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1935 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1936 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1937 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1938 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1939 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1940 specified on the command line.
1941 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1942 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1943 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1944 the first file untouched.
1945 * readlink: new program
1946 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1947 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1948 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1949 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1950 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1951 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1954 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1955 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1956 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1957 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1958 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1959 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1960 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1961 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1962 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1963 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1964 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1965 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1967 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1968 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1969 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1971 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1972 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1973 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1974 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1975 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1976 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1977 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1978 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1981 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1982 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1985 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1986 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1987 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1988 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1989 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1990 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1991 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1994 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1995 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1997 ========================================================================
1998 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1999 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2002 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2004 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2005 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2006 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2007 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2008 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2009 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2010 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2011 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2012 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2013 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2014 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2015 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2017 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2018 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2019 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2020 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2022 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2025 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2027 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2028 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2029 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2030 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2031 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2032 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2033 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2036 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2037 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2038 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2039 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2040 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2041 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2042 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2043 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2044 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2045 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2046 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2047 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2048 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2049 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2050 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2051 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2053 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2054 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2056 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2057 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2058 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2059 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2060 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2061 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2063 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2064 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2065 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2066 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2067 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2068 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2069 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2071 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2072 the source files in the following example:
2073 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2074 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2075 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2076 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2077 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2078 links between source files with --preserve=links
2079 * cp accepts new options:
2080 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2081 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2082 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2083 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2084 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2085 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2086 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2087 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2088 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2090 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2091 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2092 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2093 even though it's older than dest.
2094 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2095 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2096 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2097 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2098 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2100 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2101 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2102 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2103 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2104 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2105 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2106 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2108 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2109 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2110 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2112 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2113 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2114 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2115 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2116 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2117 This is the default.
2119 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2120 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2121 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2122 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2123 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2125 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2128 ========================================================================
2129 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2130 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2133 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2134 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2136 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2137 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2138 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2139 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2140 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2142 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2143 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2144 that specifies a non-directory
2147 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2148 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2149 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2150 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2151 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2152 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2153 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2154 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2155 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2156 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2157 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2158 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2159 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2160 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2161 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2162 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2163 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2164 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2165 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2166 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2167 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2168 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2169 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2170 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2172 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2173 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2174 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2176 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2178 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2179 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2181 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2182 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2183 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2184 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2185 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2187 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2188 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2189 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2190 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2191 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2193 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2195 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2196 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2197 * still more portability fixes
2198 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2199 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2201 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2203 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2205 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2207 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2208 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2209 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2210 there is any time remaining
2211 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2213 ========================================================================
2214 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2215 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2217 This package began as the union of the following:
2218 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2220 ========================================================================
2222 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2225 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2226 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2227 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2228 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2229 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2230 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.