1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
8 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
10 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
11 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
13 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
14 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
16 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
17 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
18 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
19 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
21 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
22 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
24 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses.
28 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
31 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
35 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
36 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
37 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
38 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
40 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
41 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
42 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
44 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
45 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
47 ** Changes in behavior
49 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
50 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
52 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
53 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
54 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
55 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
56 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
57 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
59 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
60 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
61 the same way as the others.
64 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
68 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
69 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
70 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
72 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
73 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
75 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
76 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
77 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
79 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
80 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
82 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
83 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
85 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
86 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
87 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
89 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
90 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
91 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
92 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
96 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
97 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
99 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
102 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
103 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
105 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
107 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
108 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
109 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
111 ** Changes in behavior
113 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
114 rather than its aliased target.
116 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
117 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
118 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
120 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
121 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
122 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
123 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
124 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
125 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
126 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
127 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
129 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
131 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
133 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
134 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
137 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
138 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
139 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
140 control like taskset for example.
142 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
144 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
145 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
146 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
147 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
148 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
149 includes %C when context information is available.
151 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
152 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
153 rather than a file system attribute.
155 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
156 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
157 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
158 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
160 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
161 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
162 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
164 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
165 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
166 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
169 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
173 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
174 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
176 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
178 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
179 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
181 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
182 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
183 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
184 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
186 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
187 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
188 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
192 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
193 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
195 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
196 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
197 duration after the initial signal was sent.
199 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
200 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
201 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
202 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
203 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
204 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
205 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
206 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
207 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
209 ** Changes in behavior
211 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
212 sequence when it would be a no-op.
214 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
215 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
218 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
222 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
223 of available processors, which may not have been the case
224 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
225 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
229 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
230 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
232 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
233 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
234 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
235 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
237 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
238 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
239 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
242 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
246 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
247 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
248 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
250 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
251 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
252 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
254 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
255 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
257 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
258 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
259 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
260 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
262 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
263 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
264 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
266 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
267 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
268 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
269 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
271 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
272 renamed-aside and then recreated.
273 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
275 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
276 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
277 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
278 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
280 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
281 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
282 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
284 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
285 processes will not intersperse their output.
286 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
289 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
293 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
294 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
296 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
297 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
299 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
300 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
301 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
302 the presence of the empty string argument.
303 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
305 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
306 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
307 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
308 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
310 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
311 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
313 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
314 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
315 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
317 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
318 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
319 and with a malicious user on the same system
320 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
321 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
324 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
328 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
329 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
330 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
332 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
333 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
334 offending directory and all "contents."
336 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
337 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
338 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
340 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
341 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
342 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
344 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
345 processes will not intersperse their output.
346 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
347 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
349 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
350 output the name of the file to stdout.
351 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
353 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
354 call fails with errno == EACCES.
355 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
357 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
358 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
361 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
362 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
363 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
365 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
366 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
367 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
368 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
369 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
370 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
372 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
373 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
374 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
375 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
377 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
378 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
380 ** Changes in behavior
382 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
383 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
384 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
385 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
386 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
388 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
389 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
390 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
391 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
393 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
395 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
396 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
397 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
398 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
399 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
403 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
407 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
408 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
410 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
411 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
413 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
414 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
415 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
417 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
418 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
421 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
425 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
426 when the source file doesn't have write access.
427 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
429 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
430 to accommodate leap seconds.
431 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
433 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
434 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
435 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
437 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
439 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
440 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
441 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
443 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
444 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
445 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
446 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
447 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
451 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
452 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
453 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
454 directory or a symlink to a directory.
456 ** Changes in behavior
458 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
459 environment variable is set.
461 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
462 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
463 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
467 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
468 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
469 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
470 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
472 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
473 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
474 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
475 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
479 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
480 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
481 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
483 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
484 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
485 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
486 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
487 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
488 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
491 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
492 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
495 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
499 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
500 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
501 and libraries tested at configure time.
502 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
504 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
505 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
507 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
508 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
510 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
511 printing a summary to stderr.
512 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
514 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
515 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
516 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
518 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
519 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
521 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
522 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
523 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
524 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
526 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
527 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
528 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
529 which is relatively unusual.
530 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
532 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
533 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
534 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
535 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
536 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
537 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
538 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
542 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
543 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
544 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
545 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
546 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
550 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
551 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
553 ** Changes in behavior
555 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
556 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
557 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
558 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
559 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
562 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
566 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
567 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
569 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
570 before data copying has started.
572 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
573 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
575 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
576 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
577 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
578 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
580 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
581 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
582 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
583 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
585 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
590 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
591 for its standard streams.
593 ** Changes in behavior
595 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
596 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
597 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
598 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
599 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
600 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
602 ** Deprecated options
604 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
605 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
609 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
611 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
612 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
615 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
617 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
618 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
620 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
621 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
624 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
628 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
629 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
630 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
631 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
633 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
634 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
635 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
636 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
637 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
642 make check: two tests have been corrected
646 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
647 inherited from gnulib.
650 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
654 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
655 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
656 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
657 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
659 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
660 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
662 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
664 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
665 systems without xattr support.
667 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
668 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
669 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
671 ** Changes in behavior
673 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
674 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
675 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
676 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
678 ** Improved robustness
680 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
681 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
682 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
683 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
684 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
685 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
686 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
687 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
688 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
692 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
693 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
695 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
696 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
697 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
698 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
699 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
702 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
706 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
707 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
708 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
712 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
713 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
714 data was read, or on process exit.
715 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
717 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
718 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
719 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
720 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
722 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
723 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
724 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
725 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
727 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
728 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
730 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
731 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
733 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
734 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
735 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
737 ** Changes in behavior
739 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
740 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
741 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
743 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
744 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
746 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
747 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
748 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
751 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
755 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
757 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
758 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
759 install: Never copies xattrs
761 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
762 from overwriting any existing destination file
764 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
765 mode where this feature is available.
767 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
768 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
769 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
770 do not modify the destination at all.
772 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
774 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
778 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
779 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
781 cp uses much less memory in some situations
783 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
784 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
786 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
787 processing the first file name
789 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
790 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
791 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
792 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
794 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
795 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
797 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
798 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
801 ** Changes in behavior
803 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
804 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
806 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
807 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
808 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
810 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
811 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
813 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
815 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
816 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
817 is still marked with a '+'.
820 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
824 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
825 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
829 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
830 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
831 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
832 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
833 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
834 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
836 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
837 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
839 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
840 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
842 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
844 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
845 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
846 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
848 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
849 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
851 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
852 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
853 used to factor large numbers.
855 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
858 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
860 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
862 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
863 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
865 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
866 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
867 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
868 maximum command-line (argv) length.
870 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
871 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
872 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
874 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
875 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
879 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
881 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
882 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
884 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
885 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
887 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
889 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
890 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
894 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
895 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
896 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
898 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
900 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
901 no matter how many files are in a given directory
903 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
904 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
905 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
907 ** Changes in behavior
909 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
910 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
913 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
917 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
919 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
920 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
921 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
923 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
924 with no USERNAME argument.
926 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
927 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
928 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
930 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
931 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
932 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
933 number of fields for some inputs.
935 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
936 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
938 ** Changes in behavior
940 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
941 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
944 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
948 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
950 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
951 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
952 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
953 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
955 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
956 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
958 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
959 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
961 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
962 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
964 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
965 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
966 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
967 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
969 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
970 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
971 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
972 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
973 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
974 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
976 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
977 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
979 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
980 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
981 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
983 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
984 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
986 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
987 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
989 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
990 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
991 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
992 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
994 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
995 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
997 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
998 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1000 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1001 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1002 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1006 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1007 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1009 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1010 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1011 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1012 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1016 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1017 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1019 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1021 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1025 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1026 which have negative errno values.
1030 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1034 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1038 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1039 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1042 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1046 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1047 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1048 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1050 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1051 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1052 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1053 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1057 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1058 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1059 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1060 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1063 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1067 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1069 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1070 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1071 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1074 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1078 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1079 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1081 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1083 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1085 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1087 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1091 ** Changes in behavior
1093 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1094 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1096 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1097 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1099 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1100 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1101 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1105 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1106 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1107 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1108 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1109 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1110 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1111 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1112 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1113 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1114 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1115 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1117 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1118 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1119 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1122 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1125 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1126 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1127 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1129 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1130 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1131 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1134 ** New build options
1136 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1137 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1138 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1139 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1141 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1142 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1143 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1144 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1145 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1146 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1147 of "make check" fail.
1149 ** Remove deprecated options
1151 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1152 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1153 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1154 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1155 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1157 ** Improved robustness
1159 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1160 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1161 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1162 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1163 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1164 loss of the contents of a/f.
1166 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1167 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1171 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1172 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1173 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1175 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1176 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1177 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1178 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1180 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1181 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1182 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1183 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1184 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1185 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1186 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1187 destination is a symlink.
1189 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1191 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1192 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1194 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1195 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1197 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1199 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1200 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1202 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1203 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1205 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1208 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1209 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1211 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1212 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1214 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1215 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1216 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1217 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1219 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1220 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1221 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1223 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1224 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1225 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1227 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1228 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1229 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1230 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1232 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1233 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1234 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1236 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1237 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1239 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1240 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1242 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1244 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1245 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1246 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1248 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1249 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1251 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1252 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1254 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1255 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1257 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1258 [present in the original version]
1261 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1265 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1267 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1268 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1269 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1271 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1272 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1274 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1278 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1279 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1281 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1282 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1284 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1285 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1287 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1288 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1289 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1290 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1291 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1292 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1294 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1295 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1298 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1299 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1301 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1304 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1305 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1306 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1308 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1309 directory is unreadable.
1311 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1312 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1313 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1315 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1316 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1317 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1318 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1319 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1322 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1323 Before it would print nothing.
1325 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1327 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1328 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1329 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1330 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1331 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1332 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1333 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1334 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1336 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1340 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1341 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1342 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1344 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1345 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1346 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1347 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1350 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1354 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1355 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1356 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1357 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1358 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1359 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1360 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1362 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1363 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1364 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1365 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1366 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1367 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1368 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1369 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1371 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1372 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1373 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1376 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1380 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1381 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1383 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1384 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1385 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1387 ** Improved robustness
1389 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1390 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1391 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1394 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1398 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1399 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1400 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1401 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1402 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1404 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1408 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1411 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1415 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1416 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1417 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1418 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1420 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1421 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1423 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1424 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1425 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1428 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1430 ** Improved robustness
1432 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1433 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1435 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1436 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1437 or NFS-mounted partition.
1439 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1440 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1444 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1445 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1446 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1447 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1448 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1449 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1451 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1452 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1454 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1455 or neglect to report file removal.
1457 For the "groups" command:
1459 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1460 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1462 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1464 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1466 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1470 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1471 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1474 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1476 ** Changes in behavior
1478 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1479 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1480 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1481 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1483 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1484 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1485 a final `./' or `../' component.
1487 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1488 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1489 this only for pipes.
1491 ** Infrastructure changes
1493 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1494 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1495 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1496 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1500 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1501 name is "." or "..".
1503 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1504 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1505 dirent.d_type support.
1507 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1508 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1510 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1511 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1512 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1513 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1516 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1518 ** Changes in behavior
1520 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1524 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1525 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1529 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1530 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1531 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1533 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1534 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1536 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1537 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1539 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1541 ** Improved robustness
1543 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1544 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1545 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1547 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1548 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1551 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1552 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1554 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1555 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1557 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1558 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1560 ** Changes in behavior
1562 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1563 where the two are distinct.
1565 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1566 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1567 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1568 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1569 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1570 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1571 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1572 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1573 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1574 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1575 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1576 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1577 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1578 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1579 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1580 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1581 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1583 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1584 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1585 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1587 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1588 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1589 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1590 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1593 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1594 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1598 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1599 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1600 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1601 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1603 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1604 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1605 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1607 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1608 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1609 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1610 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1611 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1614 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1615 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1617 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1618 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1619 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1620 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1622 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1623 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1624 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1626 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1627 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1628 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1629 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1631 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1632 and sticky) with the -m option.
1634 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1635 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1636 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1637 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1638 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1640 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1641 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1643 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1647 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1648 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1649 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1650 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1652 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1654 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1656 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1657 silently ignoring one of them.
1659 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1660 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1661 containing this change was 5.92.
1663 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1664 automatically newline terminated.
1666 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1667 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1668 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1669 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1672 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1673 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1674 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1677 ** Scheduled for removal
1679 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1680 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1682 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1683 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1684 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1685 command to unlink a directory.
1687 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1688 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1689 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1690 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1694 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1695 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1696 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1697 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1698 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1699 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1703 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1704 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1706 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1708 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1709 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1710 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1712 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1713 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1716 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1717 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1719 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1720 list directories before files.
1722 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1723 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1724 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1725 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1728 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1730 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1732 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1733 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1734 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1736 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1737 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1741 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1742 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1743 usually printing nothing.
1745 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1747 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1748 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1749 them with hard-linked directories.
1751 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1752 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1753 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1755 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1756 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1757 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1759 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1762 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1763 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1765 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1766 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1768 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1769 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1771 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1772 all command-line arguments.
1774 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1776 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1778 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1779 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1781 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1783 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1784 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1785 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1786 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1787 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1789 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1790 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1792 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1793 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1794 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1795 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1797 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1799 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1803 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1804 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1806 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1807 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1809 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1810 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1812 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1813 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1815 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1816 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1818 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1820 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1821 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1822 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1825 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1827 ** Build-related bug fixes
1829 installing .mo files would fail
1832 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1836 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1838 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1841 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1845 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1846 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1850 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1852 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1853 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1855 ** Deprecated options
1857 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1858 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1860 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1864 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1866 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1867 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1868 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1869 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1871 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1874 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1880 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1885 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1887 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1889 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1890 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1891 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1893 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1894 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1895 problematic usages. These include:
1897 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1898 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1899 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1900 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1901 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1902 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1903 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1904 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1905 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1907 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1908 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1910 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1911 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1912 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1913 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1915 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1916 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1917 between binary and text files.
1919 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1923 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1927 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1928 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1930 head tac tail tee tr
1931 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1933 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1934 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1936 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1937 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1938 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1940 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1942 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1944 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1945 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1946 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1950 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1952 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1953 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1955 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1956 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1957 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1961 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1962 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1966 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1967 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1968 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1972 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1973 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1977 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1979 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1981 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1985 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1986 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1987 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1989 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1990 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1991 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1992 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1993 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1995 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1999 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2000 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2001 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2003 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2005 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2006 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2007 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2008 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2010 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2012 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2013 rather than silently wrapping around.
2015 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2016 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2018 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2019 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2021 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2022 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2023 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2024 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2026 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2028 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2030 ** Improved robustness
2032 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2033 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2034 no matter how large the result.
2036 ** Improved portability
2038 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2039 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2041 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2043 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2044 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2045 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2047 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2048 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2052 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2053 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2055 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2057 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2058 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2059 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2060 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2062 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2063 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2065 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2066 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2067 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2069 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2071 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2072 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2074 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2075 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2077 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2079 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2080 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2082 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2083 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2085 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2086 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2087 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2089 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2091 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2093 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2097 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2099 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2100 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2101 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2103 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2104 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2106 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2107 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2108 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2110 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2111 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2113 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2114 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2115 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2116 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2118 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2119 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2121 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2122 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2123 the file system does not support it.
2125 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2127 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2128 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2130 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2132 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2133 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2135 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2136 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2137 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2138 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2140 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2141 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2144 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2145 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2146 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2147 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2149 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2150 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2151 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2152 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2154 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2155 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2157 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2159 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2160 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2161 reporting incorrect results.
2165 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2166 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2168 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2171 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2173 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2174 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2176 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2177 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2179 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2182 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2183 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2184 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2185 the file name does not look like a page range.
2187 printf has several changes:
2189 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2190 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2192 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2193 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2194 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2196 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2197 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2200 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2201 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2203 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2204 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2206 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2208 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2209 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2211 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2213 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2215 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2216 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2217 when first encountering the directory.
2221 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2222 output; POSIX requires this.
2224 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2225 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2227 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2229 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2230 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2232 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2233 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2235 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2236 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2237 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2238 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2239 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2240 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2241 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2243 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2244 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2245 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2247 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2248 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2250 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2252 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2254 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2255 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2256 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2257 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2259 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2263 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2264 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2265 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2266 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2267 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2269 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2270 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2271 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2273 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2274 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2276 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2277 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2279 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2280 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2281 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2282 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2283 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2285 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2286 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2288 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2289 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2291 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2293 nocreat do not create the output file
2294 excl fail if the output file already exists
2295 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2296 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2298 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2300 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2301 direct use direct I/O for data
2302 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2303 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2304 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2305 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2306 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2308 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2310 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2311 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2314 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2315 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2316 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2317 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2318 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2319 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2321 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2322 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2324 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2327 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2329 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2331 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2332 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2334 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2335 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2336 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2338 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2339 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2340 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2342 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2344 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2345 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2347 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2348 for compatibility with bash.
2350 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2352 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2353 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2354 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2355 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2357 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2358 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2360 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2361 ls supports TABSIZE.
2362 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2363 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2364 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2366 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2369 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2371 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2372 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2373 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2374 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2375 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2376 an offset, not as a file name.
2378 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2379 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2381 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2382 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2384 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2385 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2387 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2388 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2389 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2391 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2392 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2394 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2395 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2399 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2401 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2403 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2407 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2408 or more arguments between partitions.
2410 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2411 holes in the destination.
2413 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2414 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2415 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2416 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2417 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2418 terminates immediately.
2420 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2422 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2424 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2425 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2426 not the empty string.
2428 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2429 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2433 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2434 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2435 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2438 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2445 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2449 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2450 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2452 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2453 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2455 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2456 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2457 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2460 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2464 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2465 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2467 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2468 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2470 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2471 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2472 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2474 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2476 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2479 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2481 ** Configuration option
2483 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2484 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2488 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2489 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2493 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2494 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2495 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2498 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2499 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2500 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2501 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2502 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2503 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2504 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2507 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2511 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2512 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2513 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2515 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2516 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2518 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2520 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2521 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2522 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2523 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2525 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2527 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2528 not just the ones that reference directories
2530 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2531 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2533 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2534 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2535 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2537 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2538 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2539 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2540 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2541 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2542 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2544 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2549 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2550 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2552 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2554 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2556 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2558 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2559 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2561 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2562 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2564 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2566 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2570 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2572 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2574 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2575 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2576 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2577 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2578 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2580 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2581 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2583 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2584 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2586 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2587 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2589 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2590 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2591 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2595 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2596 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2597 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2598 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2599 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2600 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2601 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2602 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2603 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2604 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2605 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2606 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2607 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2608 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2610 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2612 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2613 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2615 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2617 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2619 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2620 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2622 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2624 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2625 without a trailing newline.
2627 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2628 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2630 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2633 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2637 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2639 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2641 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2642 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2643 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2644 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2646 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2648 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2649 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2650 be printed without leading spaces.
2652 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2653 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2658 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2659 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2660 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2662 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2664 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2665 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2667 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2668 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2670 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2671 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2673 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2675 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2677 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2679 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2680 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2682 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2684 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2686 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2687 byte offsets are specified.
2690 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2693 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2696 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2697 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2698 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2699 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2700 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2701 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2702 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2703 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2704 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2705 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2706 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2707 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2708 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2709 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2710 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2711 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2712 directory where M has write access.
2713 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2714 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2715 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2718 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2719 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2720 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2721 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2722 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2723 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2724 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2725 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2726 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2727 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2728 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2729 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2730 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2731 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2732 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2733 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2734 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2735 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2736 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2737 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2738 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2739 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2740 appeared one additional time.
2742 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2743 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2744 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2745 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2748 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2749 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2750 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2751 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2752 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2753 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2754 if there were more than 338.
2756 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2757 - false --help now exits nonzero
2760 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2761 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2762 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2763 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2766 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2767 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2768 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2769 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2770 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2773 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2774 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2775 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2776 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2777 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2778 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2779 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2782 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2783 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2784 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2785 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2786 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2787 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2789 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2790 under certain unusual conditions
2791 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2792 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2795 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2796 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2797 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2798 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2799 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2800 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2801 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2802 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2803 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2804 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2805 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2806 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2807 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2808 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2809 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2810 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2813 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2814 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2817 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2818 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2819 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2820 involving hard-linked directories
2821 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2822 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2823 character-special and block files
2826 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2827 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2828 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2829 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2830 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2831 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2832 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2833 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2834 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2836 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2837 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2838 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2839 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2840 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2841 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2842 specified on the command line.
2843 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2844 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2845 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2846 the first file untouched.
2847 * readlink: new program
2848 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2849 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2850 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2851 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2852 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2853 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2856 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2857 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2858 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2859 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2860 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2861 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2862 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2863 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2864 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2865 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2866 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2867 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2869 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2870 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2871 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2873 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2874 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2875 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2876 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2877 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2878 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2879 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2880 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2883 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2884 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2887 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2888 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2889 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2890 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2891 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2892 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2893 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2896 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2897 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2899 ========================================================================
2900 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2901 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2904 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2906 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2907 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2908 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2909 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2910 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2911 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2912 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2913 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2914 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2915 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2916 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2917 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2919 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2920 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2921 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2922 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2924 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2927 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2929 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2930 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2931 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2932 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2933 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2934 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2935 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2938 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2939 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2940 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2941 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2942 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2943 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2944 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2945 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2946 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2947 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2948 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2949 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2950 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2951 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2952 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2953 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2955 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2956 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2958 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2959 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2960 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2961 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2962 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2963 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2965 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2966 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2967 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2968 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2969 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2970 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2971 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2973 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2974 the source files in the following example:
2975 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2976 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2977 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2978 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2979 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2980 links between source files with --preserve=links
2981 * cp accepts new options:
2982 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2983 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2984 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2985 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2986 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2987 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2988 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2989 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2990 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2992 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2993 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2994 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2995 even though it's older than dest.
2996 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2997 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2998 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2999 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3000 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3002 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3003 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3004 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3005 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3006 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3007 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3008 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3010 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3011 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3012 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3014 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3015 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3016 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3017 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3018 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3019 This is the default.
3021 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3022 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3023 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3024 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3025 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3027 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3030 ========================================================================
3031 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3032 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3035 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3036 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3038 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3039 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3040 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3041 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3042 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3044 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3045 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3046 that specifies a non-directory
3049 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3050 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3051 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3052 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3053 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3054 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3055 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3056 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3057 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3058 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3059 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3060 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3061 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3062 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3063 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3064 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3065 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3066 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3067 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3068 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3069 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3070 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3071 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3072 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3074 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3075 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3076 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3078 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3080 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3081 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3083 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3084 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3085 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3086 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3087 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3089 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3090 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3091 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3092 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3093 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3095 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3097 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3098 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3099 * still more portability fixes
3100 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3101 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3103 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3105 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3107 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3109 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3110 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3111 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3112 there is any time remaining
3113 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3115 ========================================================================
3116 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3117 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3119 This package began as the union of the following:
3120 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3122 ========================================================================
3124 Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3126 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3127 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3128 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3129 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3130 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3131 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.