1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8+ (????-??-??) [not-unstable]
6 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
10 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
11 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
13 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
14 support but with insufficient /proc support.
16 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
17 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
19 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
20 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
21 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
22 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
23 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
24 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
26 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
27 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
30 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
31 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
33 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
36 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
37 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
38 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
40 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
41 directory is unreadable.
43 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
44 Before it would print nothing.
46 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
50 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
51 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
52 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
54 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
55 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
56 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
57 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
60 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
64 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
65 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
66 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
67 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
68 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
69 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
70 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
72 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
73 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
74 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
75 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
76 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
77 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
78 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
79 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
81 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
82 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
83 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
86 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
90 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
91 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
93 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
94 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
95 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
97 ** Improved robustness
99 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
100 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
101 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
104 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
108 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
109 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
110 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
111 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
112 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
114 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
118 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
121 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
125 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
126 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
127 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
128 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
130 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
131 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
133 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
134 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
135 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
138 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
140 ** Improved robustness
142 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
143 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
145 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
146 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
147 or NFS-mounted partition.
149 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
150 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
154 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
155 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
156 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
157 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
158 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
159 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
161 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
162 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
164 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
165 or neglect to report file removal.
167 For the "groups" command:
169 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
170 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
172 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
174 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
176 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
180 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
181 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
184 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
186 ** Changes in behavior
188 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
189 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
190 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
191 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
193 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
194 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
195 a final `./' or `../' component.
197 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
198 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
201 ** Infrastructure changes
203 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
204 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
205 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
206 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
210 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
213 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
214 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
215 dirent.d_type support.
217 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
218 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
220 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
221 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
222 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
223 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
226 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
228 ** Changes in behavior
230 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
234 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
235 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
239 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
240 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
241 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
243 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
244 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
246 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
247 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
249 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
251 ** Improved robustness
253 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
254 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
255 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
257 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
258 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
261 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
262 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
264 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
265 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
267 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
268 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
270 ** Changes in behavior
272 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
273 where the two are distinct.
275 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
276 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
277 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
278 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
279 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
280 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
281 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
282 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
283 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
284 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
285 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
286 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
287 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
288 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
289 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
290 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
291 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
293 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
294 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
295 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
297 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
298 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
299 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
300 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
303 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
304 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
308 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
309 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
310 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
311 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
313 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
314 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
315 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
317 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
318 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
319 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
320 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
321 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
324 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
325 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
327 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
328 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
329 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
330 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
332 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
333 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
334 successful and the output is easier to parse.
336 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
337 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
338 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
339 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
341 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
342 and sticky) with the -m option.
344 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
345 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
346 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
347 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
348 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
350 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
351 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
353 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
357 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
358 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
359 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
360 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
362 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
364 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
366 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
367 silently ignoring one of them.
369 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
370 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
371 containing this change was 5.92.
373 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
374 automatically newline terminated.
376 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
377 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
378 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
379 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
382 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
383 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
384 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
387 ** Scheduled for removal
389 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
390 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
392 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
393 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
394 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
395 command to unlink a directory.
397 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
398 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
399 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
400 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
404 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
405 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
406 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
407 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
408 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
409 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
413 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
414 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
416 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
418 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
419 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
420 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
422 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
423 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
426 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
427 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
429 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
430 list directories before files.
432 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
433 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
434 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
435 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
438 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
440 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
442 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
443 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
444 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
446 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
447 list of NUL-terminated file names.
451 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
452 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
453 usually printing nothing.
455 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
457 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
458 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
459 them with hard-linked directories.
461 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
462 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
463 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
465 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
466 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
467 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
469 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
472 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
473 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
475 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
476 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
478 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
479 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
481 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
482 all command-line arguments.
484 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
486 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
488 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
489 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
491 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
493 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
494 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
495 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
496 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
497 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
499 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
500 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
502 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
503 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
504 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
505 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
507 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
509 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
513 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
514 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
516 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
517 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
519 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
520 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
522 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
523 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
525 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
526 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
528 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
530 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
531 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
532 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
535 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
537 ** Build-related bug fixes
539 installing .mo files would fail
542 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
546 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
548 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
551 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
555 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
556 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
560 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
562 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
563 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
565 ** Deprecated options
567 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
568 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
570 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
574 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
576 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
577 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
578 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
579 conforming to older POSIX versions.
581 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
584 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
590 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
595 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
597 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
599 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
600 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
601 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
603 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
604 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
605 problematic usages. These include:
607 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
608 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
609 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
610 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
611 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
612 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
613 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
614 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
615 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
617 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
618 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
620 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
621 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
622 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
623 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
625 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
626 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
627 between binary and text files.
629 The following programs now always use text input/output:
633 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
637 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
638 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
641 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
643 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
644 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
646 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
647 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
648 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
650 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
652 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
654 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
655 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
656 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
660 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
662 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
663 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
665 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
666 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
667 blocks until F contains N blocks.
671 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
672 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
676 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
677 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
678 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
682 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
683 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
687 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
689 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
691 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
695 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
696 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
697 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
699 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
700 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
701 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
702 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
703 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
705 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
709 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
710 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
711 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
713 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
715 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
716 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
717 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
718 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
720 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
722 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
723 rather than silently wrapping around.
725 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
726 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
728 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
729 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
731 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
732 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
733 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
736 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
738 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
740 ** Improved robustness
742 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
743 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
744 no matter how large the result.
746 ** Improved portability
748 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
749 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
751 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
753 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
754 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
755 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
757 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
758 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
762 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
763 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
765 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
767 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
768 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
769 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
770 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
772 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
773 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
775 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
776 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
777 categories if not specified by dircolors.
779 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
781 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
782 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
784 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
785 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
787 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
789 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
790 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
792 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
793 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
795 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
796 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
797 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
799 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
801 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
803 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
807 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
809 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
810 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
811 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
813 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
814 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
816 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
817 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
818 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
820 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
821 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
823 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
824 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
825 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
826 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
828 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
829 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
831 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
832 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
833 the file system does not support it.
835 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
837 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
838 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
840 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
842 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
843 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
845 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
846 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
847 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
848 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
850 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
851 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
854 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
855 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
856 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
857 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
859 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
860 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
861 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
862 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
864 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
865 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
867 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
869 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
870 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
871 reporting incorrect results.
875 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
876 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
878 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
881 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
883 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
884 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
886 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
887 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
889 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
892 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
893 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
894 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
895 the file name does not look like a page range.
897 printf has several changes:
899 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
900 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
902 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
903 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
904 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
906 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
907 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
910 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
911 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
913 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
914 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
916 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
918 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
919 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
921 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
923 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
925 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
926 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
927 when first encountering the directory.
931 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
932 output; POSIX requires this.
934 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
935 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
937 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
939 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
940 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
942 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
943 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
945 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
946 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
947 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
948 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
949 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
950 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
951 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
953 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
954 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
955 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
957 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
958 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
960 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
962 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
964 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
965 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
966 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
967 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
969 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
973 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
974 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
975 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
976 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
977 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
979 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
980 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
981 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
983 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
984 is longer than PATH_MAX.
986 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
987 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
989 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
990 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
991 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
992 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
993 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
995 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
996 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
998 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
999 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1001 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1003 nocreat do not create the output file
1004 excl fail if the output file already exists
1005 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1006 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1008 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1010 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1011 direct use direct I/O for data
1012 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1013 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1014 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1015 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1016 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1018 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1020 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1021 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1024 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1025 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1026 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1027 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1028 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1029 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1031 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1032 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1034 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1037 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1039 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1041 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1042 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1044 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1045 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1046 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1048 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1049 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1050 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1052 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1054 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1055 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1057 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1058 for compatibility with bash.
1060 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1062 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1063 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1064 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1065 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1067 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1068 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1070 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1071 ls supports TABSIZE.
1072 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1073 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1074 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1076 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1079 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1081 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1082 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1083 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1084 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1085 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1086 an offset, not as a file name.
1088 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1089 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1091 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1092 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1094 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1095 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1097 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1098 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1099 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1101 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1102 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1104 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1105 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1109 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1111 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1113 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1117 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1118 or more arguments between partitions.
1120 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1121 holes in the destination.
1123 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1124 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1125 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1126 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1127 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1128 terminates immediately.
1130 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1132 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1134 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1135 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1136 not the empty string.
1138 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1139 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1143 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1144 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1145 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1148 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1155 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1159 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1160 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1162 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1163 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1165 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1166 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1167 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1170 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1174 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1175 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1177 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1178 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1180 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1181 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1182 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1184 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1186 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1189 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1191 ** Configuration option
1193 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1194 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1198 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1199 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1203 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1204 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1205 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1208 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1209 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1210 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1211 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1212 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1213 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1214 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1217 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1221 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1222 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1223 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1225 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1226 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1228 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1230 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1231 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1232 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1233 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1235 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1237 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1238 not just the ones that reference directories
1240 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1241 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1243 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1244 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1245 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1247 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1248 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1249 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1250 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1251 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1252 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1254 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1259 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1260 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1262 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1264 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1266 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1268 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1269 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1271 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1272 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1274 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1276 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1280 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1282 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1284 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1285 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1286 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1287 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1288 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1290 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1291 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1293 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1294 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1296 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1297 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1299 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1300 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1301 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1305 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1306 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1307 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1308 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1309 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1310 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1311 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1312 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1313 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1314 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1315 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1316 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1317 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1318 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1320 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1322 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1323 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1325 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1327 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1329 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1330 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1332 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1334 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1335 without a trailing newline.
1337 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1338 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1340 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1343 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1347 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1349 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1351 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1352 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1353 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1354 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1356 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1358 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1359 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1360 be printed without leading spaces.
1362 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1363 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1368 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1369 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1370 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1372 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1374 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1375 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1377 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1378 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1380 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1381 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1383 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1385 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1387 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1389 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1390 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1392 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1394 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1396 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1397 byte offsets are specified.
1400 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1403 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1406 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1407 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1408 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1409 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1410 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1411 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1412 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1413 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1414 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1415 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1416 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1417 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1418 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1419 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1420 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1421 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1422 directory where M has write access.
1423 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1424 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1425 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1428 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1429 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1430 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1431 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1432 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1433 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1434 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1435 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1436 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1437 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1438 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1439 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1440 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1441 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1442 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1443 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1444 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1445 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1446 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1447 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1448 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1449 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1450 appeared one additional time.
1452 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1453 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1454 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1455 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1458 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1459 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1460 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1461 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1462 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1463 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1464 if there were more than 338.
1466 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1467 - false --help now exits nonzero
1470 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1471 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1472 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1473 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1476 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1477 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1478 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1479 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1480 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1483 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1484 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1485 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1486 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1487 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1488 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1489 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1492 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1493 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1494 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1495 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1496 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1497 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1499 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1500 under certain unusual conditions
1501 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1502 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1505 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1506 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1507 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1508 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1509 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1510 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1511 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1512 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1513 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1514 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1515 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1516 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1517 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1518 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1519 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1520 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1523 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1524 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1527 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1528 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1529 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1530 involving hard-linked directories
1531 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1532 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1533 character-special and block files
1536 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1537 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1538 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1539 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1540 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1541 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1542 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1543 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1544 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1546 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1547 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1548 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1549 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1550 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1551 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1552 specified on the command line.
1553 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1554 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1555 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1556 the first file untouched.
1557 * readlink: new program
1558 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1559 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1560 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1561 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1562 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1563 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1566 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1567 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1568 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1569 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1570 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1571 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1572 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1573 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1574 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1575 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1576 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1577 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1579 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1580 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1581 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1583 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1584 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1585 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1586 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1587 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1588 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1589 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1590 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1593 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1594 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1597 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1598 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1599 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1600 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1601 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1602 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1603 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1606 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1607 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1609 ========================================================================
1610 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1611 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1614 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1616 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1617 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1618 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1619 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1620 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1621 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1622 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1623 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1624 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1625 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1626 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1627 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1629 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1630 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1631 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1632 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1634 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1637 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1639 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1640 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1641 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1642 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1643 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1644 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1645 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1648 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1649 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1650 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1651 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1652 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1653 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1654 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1655 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1656 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1657 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1658 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1659 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1660 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1661 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1662 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1663 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1665 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1666 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1668 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1669 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1670 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1671 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1672 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1673 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1675 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1676 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1677 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1678 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1679 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1680 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1681 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1683 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1684 the source files in the following example:
1685 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1686 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1687 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1688 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1689 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1690 links between source files with --preserve=links
1691 * cp accepts new options:
1692 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1693 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1694 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1695 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1696 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1697 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1698 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1699 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1700 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1702 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1703 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1704 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1705 even though it's older than dest.
1706 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1707 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1708 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1709 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1710 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1712 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1713 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1714 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1715 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1716 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1717 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1718 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1720 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1721 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1722 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1724 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1725 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1726 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1727 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1728 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1729 This is the default.
1731 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1732 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1733 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1734 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1735 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1737 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1740 ========================================================================
1741 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1742 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1745 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1746 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1748 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1749 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1750 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1751 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1752 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1754 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1755 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1756 that specifies a non-directory
1759 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1760 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1761 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1762 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1763 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1764 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1765 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1766 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1767 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1768 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1769 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1770 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1771 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1772 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1773 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1774 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1775 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1776 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1777 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1778 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1779 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1780 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1781 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1782 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1784 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1785 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1786 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1788 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1790 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1791 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1793 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1794 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1795 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1796 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1797 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1799 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1800 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1801 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1802 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1803 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1805 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1807 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1808 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1809 * still more portability fixes
1810 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1811 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1813 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1815 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1817 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1819 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1820 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1821 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1822 there is any time remaining
1823 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1825 ========================================================================
1826 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1827 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1829 This package began as the union of the following:
1830 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1832 ========================================================================
1834 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1837 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1838 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1839 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1840 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1841 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1842 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.