1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
8 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
9 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
11 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
12 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
16 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
17 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
19 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
22 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
23 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
25 ** Changes in behavior
27 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
28 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
29 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
31 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
32 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
33 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
34 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
35 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
36 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
37 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
38 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
40 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
42 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
43 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
46 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
47 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
48 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
49 control like taskset for example.
51 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
52 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
53 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning.
55 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
56 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
57 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
59 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
60 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
61 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
64 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
68 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
69 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
71 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
73 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
74 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
76 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
77 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
78 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
79 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
81 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
82 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
83 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
87 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
88 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
90 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
91 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
92 duration after the initial signal was sent.
94 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
95 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
96 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
97 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
98 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
99 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
100 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
101 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
102 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
104 ** Changes in behavior
106 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
107 sequence when it would be a no-op.
109 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
110 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
113 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
117 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
118 of available processors, which may not have been the case
119 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
120 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
124 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
125 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
127 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
128 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
129 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
130 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
132 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
133 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
134 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
137 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
141 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
142 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
143 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
145 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
146 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
147 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
149 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
150 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
152 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
153 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
154 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
155 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
157 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
158 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
159 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
161 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
162 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
163 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
164 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
166 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
167 renamed-aside and then recreated.
168 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
170 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
171 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
172 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
173 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
175 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
176 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
177 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
179 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
180 processes will not intersperse their output.
181 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
184 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
188 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
189 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
191 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
192 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
194 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
195 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
196 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
197 the presence of the empty string argument.
198 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
200 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
201 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
202 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
203 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
205 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
206 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
208 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
209 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
210 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
212 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
213 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
214 and with a malicious user on the same system
215 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
216 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
219 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
223 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
224 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
225 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
227 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
228 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
229 offending directory and all "contents."
231 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
232 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
233 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
235 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
236 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
237 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
239 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
240 processes will not intersperse their output.
241 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
242 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
244 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
245 output the name of the file to stdout.
246 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
248 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
249 call fails with errno == EACCES.
250 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
252 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
253 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
256 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
257 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
258 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
260 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
261 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
262 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
263 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
264 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
265 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
267 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
268 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
269 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
270 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
272 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
273 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
275 ** Changes in behavior
277 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
278 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
279 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
280 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
281 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
283 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
284 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
285 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
286 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
288 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
290 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
291 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
292 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
293 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
294 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
298 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
302 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
303 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
305 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
306 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
308 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
309 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
310 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
312 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
313 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
316 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
320 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
321 when the source file doesn't have write access.
322 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
324 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
325 to accommodate leap seconds.
326 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
328 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
329 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
330 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
332 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
334 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
335 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
336 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
338 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
339 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
340 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
341 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
342 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
346 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
347 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
348 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
349 directory or a symlink to a directory.
351 ** Changes in behavior
353 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
354 environment variable is set.
356 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
357 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
358 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
362 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
363 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
364 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
365 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
367 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
368 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
369 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
370 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
374 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
375 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
376 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
378 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
379 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
380 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
381 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
382 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
383 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
386 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
387 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
390 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
394 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
395 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
396 and libraries tested at configure time.
397 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
399 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
400 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
402 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
403 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
405 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
406 printing a summary to stderr.
407 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
409 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
410 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
411 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
413 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
414 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
416 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
417 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
418 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
419 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
421 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
422 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
423 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
424 which is relatively unusual.
425 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
427 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
428 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
429 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
430 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
431 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
432 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
433 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
437 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
438 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
439 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
440 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
441 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
445 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
446 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
448 ** Changes in behavior
450 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
451 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
452 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
453 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
454 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
457 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
461 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
462 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
464 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
465 before data copying has started.
467 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
468 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
470 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
471 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
472 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
473 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
475 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
476 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
477 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
478 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
480 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
485 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
486 for its standard streams.
488 ** Changes in behavior
490 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
491 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
492 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
493 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
494 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
495 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
497 ** Deprecated options
499 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
500 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
504 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
506 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
507 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
510 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
512 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
513 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
515 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
516 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
519 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
523 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
524 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
525 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
526 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
528 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
529 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
530 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
531 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
532 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
537 make check: two tests have been corrected
541 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
542 inherited from gnulib.
545 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
549 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
550 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
551 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
552 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
554 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
555 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
557 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
559 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
560 systems without xattr support.
562 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
563 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
564 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
566 ** Changes in behavior
568 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
569 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
570 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
571 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
573 ** Improved robustness
575 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
576 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
577 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
578 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
579 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
580 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
581 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
582 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
583 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
587 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
588 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
590 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
591 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
592 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
593 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
594 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
597 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
601 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
602 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
603 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
607 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
608 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
609 data was read, or on process exit.
610 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
612 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
613 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
614 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
615 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
617 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
618 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
619 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
620 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
622 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
623 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
625 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
626 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
628 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
629 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
630 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
632 ** Changes in behavior
634 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
635 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
636 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
638 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
639 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
641 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
642 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
643 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
646 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
650 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
652 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
653 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
654 install: Never copies xattrs
656 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
657 from overwriting any existing destination file
659 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
660 mode where this feature is available.
662 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
663 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
664 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
665 do not modify the destination at all.
667 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
669 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
673 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
674 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
676 cp uses much less memory in some situations
678 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
679 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
681 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
682 processing the first file name
684 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
685 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
686 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
687 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
689 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
690 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
692 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
693 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
696 ** Changes in behavior
698 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
699 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
701 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
702 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
703 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
705 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
706 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
708 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
710 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
711 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
712 is still marked with a '+'.
715 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
719 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
720 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
724 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
725 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
726 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
727 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
728 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
729 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
731 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
732 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
734 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
735 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
737 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
739 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
740 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
741 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
743 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
744 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
746 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
747 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
748 used to factor large numbers.
750 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
753 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
755 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
757 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
758 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
760 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
761 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
762 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
763 maximum command-line (argv) length.
765 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
766 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
767 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
769 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
770 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
774 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
776 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
777 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
779 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
780 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
782 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
784 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
785 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
789 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
790 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
791 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
793 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
795 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
796 no matter how many files are in a given directory
798 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
799 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
800 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
802 ** Changes in behavior
804 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
805 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
808 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
812 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
814 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
815 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
816 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
818 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
819 with no USERNAME argument.
821 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
822 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
823 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
825 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
826 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
827 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
828 number of fields for some inputs.
830 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
831 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
833 ** Changes in behavior
835 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
836 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
839 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
843 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
845 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
846 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
847 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
848 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
850 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
851 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
853 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
854 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
856 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
857 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
859 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
860 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
861 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
862 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
864 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
865 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
866 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
867 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
868 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
869 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
871 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
872 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
874 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
875 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
876 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
878 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
879 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
881 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
882 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
884 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
885 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
886 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
887 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
889 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
890 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
892 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
893 in more cases when a directory is empty.
895 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
896 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
897 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
901 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
902 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
904 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
905 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
906 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
907 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
911 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
912 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
914 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
916 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
920 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
921 which have negative errno values.
925 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
929 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
933 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
934 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
937 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
941 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
942 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
943 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
945 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
946 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
947 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
948 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
952 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
953 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
954 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
955 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
958 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
962 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
964 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
965 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
966 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
969 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
973 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
974 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
976 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
978 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
980 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
982 ** Programs no longer installed by default
986 ** Changes in behavior
988 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
989 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
991 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
992 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
994 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
995 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
996 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1000 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1001 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1002 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1003 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1004 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1005 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1006 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1007 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1008 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1009 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1010 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1012 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1013 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1014 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1017 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1020 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1021 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1022 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1024 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1025 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1026 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1029 ** New build options
1031 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1032 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1033 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1034 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1036 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1037 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1038 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1039 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1040 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1041 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1042 of "make check" fail.
1044 ** Remove deprecated options
1046 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1047 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1048 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1049 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1050 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1052 ** Improved robustness
1054 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1055 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1056 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1057 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1058 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1059 loss of the contents of a/f.
1061 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1062 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1066 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1067 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1068 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1070 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1071 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1072 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1073 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1075 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1076 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1077 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1078 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1079 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1080 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1081 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1082 destination is a symlink.
1084 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1086 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1087 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1089 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1090 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1092 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1094 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1095 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1097 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1098 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1100 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1103 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1104 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1106 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1107 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1109 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1110 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1111 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1112 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1114 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1115 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1116 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1118 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1119 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1120 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1122 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1123 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1124 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1125 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1127 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1128 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1129 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1131 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1132 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1134 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1135 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1137 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1139 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1140 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1141 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1143 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1144 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1146 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1147 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1149 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1150 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1152 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1153 [present in the original version]
1156 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1160 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1162 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1163 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1164 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1166 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1167 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1169 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1173 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1174 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1176 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1177 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1179 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1180 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1182 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1183 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1184 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1185 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1186 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1187 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1189 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1190 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1193 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1194 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1196 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1199 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1200 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1201 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1203 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1204 directory is unreadable.
1206 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1207 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1208 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1210 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1211 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1212 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1213 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1214 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1217 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1218 Before it would print nothing.
1220 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1222 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1223 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1224 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1225 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1226 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1227 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1228 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1229 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1231 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1235 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1236 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1237 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1239 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1240 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1241 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1242 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1245 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1249 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1250 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1251 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1252 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1253 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1254 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1255 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1257 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1258 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1259 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1260 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1261 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1262 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1263 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1264 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1266 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1267 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1268 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1271 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1275 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1276 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1278 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1279 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1280 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1282 ** Improved robustness
1284 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1285 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1286 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1289 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1293 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1294 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1295 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1296 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1297 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1299 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1303 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1306 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1310 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1311 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1312 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1313 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1315 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1316 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1318 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1319 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1320 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1323 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1325 ** Improved robustness
1327 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1328 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1330 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1331 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1332 or NFS-mounted partition.
1334 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1335 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1339 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1340 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1341 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1342 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1343 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1344 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1346 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1347 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1349 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1350 or neglect to report file removal.
1352 For the "groups" command:
1354 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1355 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1357 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1359 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1361 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1365 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1366 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1369 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1371 ** Changes in behavior
1373 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1374 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1375 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1376 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1378 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1379 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1380 a final `./' or `../' component.
1382 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1383 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1384 this only for pipes.
1386 ** Infrastructure changes
1388 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1389 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1390 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1391 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1395 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1396 name is "." or "..".
1398 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1399 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1400 dirent.d_type support.
1402 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1403 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1405 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1406 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1407 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1408 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1411 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1413 ** Changes in behavior
1415 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1419 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1420 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1424 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1425 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1426 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1428 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1429 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1431 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1432 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1434 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1436 ** Improved robustness
1438 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1439 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1440 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1442 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1443 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1446 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1447 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1449 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1450 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1452 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1453 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1455 ** Changes in behavior
1457 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1458 where the two are distinct.
1460 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1461 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1462 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1463 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1464 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1465 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1466 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1467 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1468 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1469 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1470 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1471 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1472 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1473 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1474 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1475 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1476 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1478 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1479 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1480 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1482 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1483 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1484 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1485 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1488 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1489 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1493 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1494 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1495 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1496 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1498 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1499 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1500 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1502 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1503 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1504 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1505 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1506 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1509 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1510 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1512 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1513 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1514 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1515 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1517 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1518 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1519 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1521 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1522 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1523 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1524 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1526 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1527 and sticky) with the -m option.
1529 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1530 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1531 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1532 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1533 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1535 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1536 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1538 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1542 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1543 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1544 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1545 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1547 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1549 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1551 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1552 silently ignoring one of them.
1554 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1555 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1556 containing this change was 5.92.
1558 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1559 automatically newline terminated.
1561 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1562 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1563 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1564 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1567 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1568 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1569 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1572 ** Scheduled for removal
1574 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1575 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1577 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1578 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1579 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1580 command to unlink a directory.
1582 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1583 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1584 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1585 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1589 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1590 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1591 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1592 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1593 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1594 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1598 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1599 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1601 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1603 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1604 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1605 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1607 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1608 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1611 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1612 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1614 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1615 list directories before files.
1617 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1618 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1619 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1620 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1623 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1625 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1627 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1628 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1629 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1631 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1632 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1636 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1637 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1638 usually printing nothing.
1640 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1642 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1643 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1644 them with hard-linked directories.
1646 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1647 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1648 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1650 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1651 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1652 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1654 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1657 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1658 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1660 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1661 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1663 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1664 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1666 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1667 all command-line arguments.
1669 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1671 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1673 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1674 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1676 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1678 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1679 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1680 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1681 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1682 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1684 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1685 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1687 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1688 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1689 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1690 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1692 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1694 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1698 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1699 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1701 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1702 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1704 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1705 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1707 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1708 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1710 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1711 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1713 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1715 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1716 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1717 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1720 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1722 ** Build-related bug fixes
1724 installing .mo files would fail
1727 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1731 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1733 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1736 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1740 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1741 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1745 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1747 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1748 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1750 ** Deprecated options
1752 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1753 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1755 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1759 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1761 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1762 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1763 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1764 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1766 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1769 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1775 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1780 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1782 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1784 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1785 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1786 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1788 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1789 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1790 problematic usages. These include:
1792 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1793 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1794 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1795 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1796 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1797 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1798 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1799 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1800 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1802 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1803 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1805 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1806 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1807 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1808 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1810 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1811 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1812 between binary and text files.
1814 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1818 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1822 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1823 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1825 head tac tail tee tr
1826 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1828 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1829 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1831 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1832 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1833 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1835 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1837 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1839 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1840 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1841 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1845 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1847 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1848 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1850 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1851 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1852 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1856 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1857 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1861 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1862 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1863 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1867 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1868 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1872 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1874 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1876 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1880 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1881 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1882 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1884 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1885 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1886 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1887 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1888 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1890 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1894 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1895 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1896 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1898 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1900 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1901 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1902 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1903 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1905 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1907 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1908 rather than silently wrapping around.
1910 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1911 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1913 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1914 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1916 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1917 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1918 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1919 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1921 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1923 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1925 ** Improved robustness
1927 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1928 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1929 no matter how large the result.
1931 ** Improved portability
1933 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1934 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1936 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1938 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1939 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1940 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1942 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1943 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1947 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1948 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1950 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1952 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1953 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1954 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1955 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1957 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1958 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1960 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1961 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1962 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1964 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1966 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1967 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1969 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1970 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1972 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1974 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1975 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1977 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1978 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1980 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1981 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1982 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1984 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1986 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1988 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1992 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1994 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1995 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1996 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1998 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1999 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2001 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2002 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2003 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2005 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2006 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2008 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2009 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2010 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2011 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2013 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2014 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2016 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2017 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2018 the file system does not support it.
2020 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2022 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2023 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2025 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2027 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2028 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2030 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2031 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2032 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2033 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2035 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2036 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2039 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2040 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2041 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2042 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2044 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2045 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2046 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2047 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2049 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2050 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2052 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2054 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2055 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2056 reporting incorrect results.
2060 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2061 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2063 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2066 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2068 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2069 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2071 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2072 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2074 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2077 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2078 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2079 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2080 the file name does not look like a page range.
2082 printf has several changes:
2084 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2085 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2087 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2088 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2089 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2091 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2092 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2095 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2096 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2098 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2099 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2101 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2103 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2104 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2106 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2108 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2110 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2111 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2112 when first encountering the directory.
2116 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2117 output; POSIX requires this.
2119 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2120 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2122 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2124 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2125 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2127 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2128 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2130 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2131 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2132 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2133 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2134 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2135 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2136 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2138 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2139 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2140 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2142 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2143 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2145 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2147 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2149 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2150 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2151 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2152 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2154 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2158 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2159 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2160 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2161 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2162 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2164 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2165 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2166 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2168 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2169 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2171 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2172 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2174 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2175 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2176 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2177 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2178 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2180 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2181 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2183 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2184 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2186 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2188 nocreat do not create the output file
2189 excl fail if the output file already exists
2190 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2191 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2193 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2195 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2196 direct use direct I/O for data
2197 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2198 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2199 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2200 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2201 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2203 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2205 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2206 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2209 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2210 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2211 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2212 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2213 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2214 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2216 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2217 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2219 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2222 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2224 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2226 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2227 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2229 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2230 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2231 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2233 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2234 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2235 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2237 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2239 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2240 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2242 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2243 for compatibility with bash.
2245 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2247 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2248 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2249 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2250 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2252 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2253 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2255 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2256 ls supports TABSIZE.
2257 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2258 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2259 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2261 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2264 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2266 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2267 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2268 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2269 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2270 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2271 an offset, not as a file name.
2273 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2274 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2276 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2277 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2279 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2280 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2282 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2283 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2284 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2286 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2287 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2289 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2290 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2294 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2296 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2298 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2302 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2303 or more arguments between partitions.
2305 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2306 holes in the destination.
2308 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2309 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2310 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2311 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2312 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2313 terminates immediately.
2315 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2317 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2319 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2320 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2321 not the empty string.
2323 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2324 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2328 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2329 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2330 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2333 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2340 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2344 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2345 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2347 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2348 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2350 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2351 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2352 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2355 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2359 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2360 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2362 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2363 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2365 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2366 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2367 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2369 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2371 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2374 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2376 ** Configuration option
2378 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2379 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2383 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2384 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2388 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2389 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2390 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2393 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2394 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2395 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2396 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2397 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2398 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2399 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2402 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2406 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2407 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2408 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2410 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2411 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2413 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2415 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2416 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2417 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2418 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2420 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2422 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2423 not just the ones that reference directories
2425 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2426 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2428 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2429 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2430 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2432 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2433 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2434 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2435 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2436 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2437 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2439 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2444 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2445 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2447 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2449 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2451 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2453 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2454 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2456 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2457 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2459 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2461 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2465 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2467 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2469 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2470 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2471 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2472 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2473 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2475 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2476 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2478 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2479 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2481 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2482 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2484 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2485 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2486 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2490 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2491 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2492 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2493 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2494 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2495 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2496 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2497 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2498 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2499 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2500 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2501 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2502 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2503 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2505 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2507 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2508 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2510 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2512 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2514 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2515 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2517 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2519 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2520 without a trailing newline.
2522 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2523 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2525 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2528 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2532 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2534 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2536 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2537 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2538 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2539 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2541 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2543 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2544 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2545 be printed without leading spaces.
2547 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2548 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2553 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2554 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2555 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2557 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2559 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2560 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2562 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2563 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2565 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2566 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2568 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2570 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2572 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2574 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2575 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2577 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2579 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2581 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2582 byte offsets are specified.
2585 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2588 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2591 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2592 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2593 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2594 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2595 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2596 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2597 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2598 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2599 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2600 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2601 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2602 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2603 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2604 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2605 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2606 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2607 directory where M has write access.
2608 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2609 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2610 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2613 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2614 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2615 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2616 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2617 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2618 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2619 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2620 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2621 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2622 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2623 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2624 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2625 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2626 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2627 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2628 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2629 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2630 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2631 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2632 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2633 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2634 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2635 appeared one additional time.
2637 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2638 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2639 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2640 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2643 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2644 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2645 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2646 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2647 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2648 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2649 if there were more than 338.
2651 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2652 - false --help now exits nonzero
2655 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2656 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2657 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2658 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2661 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2662 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2663 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2664 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2665 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2668 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2669 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2670 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2671 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2672 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2673 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2674 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2677 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2678 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2679 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2680 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2681 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2682 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2684 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2685 under certain unusual conditions
2686 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2687 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2690 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2691 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2692 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2693 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2694 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2695 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2696 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2697 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2698 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2699 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2700 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2701 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2702 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2703 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2704 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2705 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2708 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2709 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2712 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2713 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2714 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2715 involving hard-linked directories
2716 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2717 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2718 character-special and block files
2721 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2722 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2723 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2724 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2725 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2726 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2727 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2728 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2729 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2731 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2732 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2733 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2734 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2735 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2736 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2737 specified on the command line.
2738 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2739 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2740 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2741 the first file untouched.
2742 * readlink: new program
2743 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2744 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2745 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2746 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2747 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2748 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2751 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2752 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2753 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2754 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2755 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2756 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2757 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2758 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2759 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2760 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2761 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2762 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2764 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2765 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2766 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2768 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2769 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2770 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2771 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2772 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2773 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2774 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2775 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2778 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2779 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2782 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2783 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2784 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2785 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2786 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2787 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2788 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2791 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2792 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2794 ========================================================================
2795 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2796 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2799 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2801 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2802 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2803 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2804 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2805 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2806 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2807 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2808 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2809 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2810 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2811 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2812 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2814 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2815 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2816 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2817 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2819 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2822 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2824 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2825 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2826 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2827 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2828 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2829 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2830 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2833 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2834 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2835 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2836 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2837 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2838 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2839 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2840 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2841 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2842 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2843 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2844 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2845 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2846 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2847 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2848 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2850 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2851 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2853 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2854 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2855 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2856 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2857 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2858 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2860 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2861 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2862 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2863 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2864 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2865 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2866 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2868 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2869 the source files in the following example:
2870 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2871 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2872 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2873 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2874 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2875 links between source files with --preserve=links
2876 * cp accepts new options:
2877 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2878 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2879 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2880 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2881 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2882 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2883 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2884 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2885 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2887 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2888 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2889 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2890 even though it's older than dest.
2891 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2892 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2893 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2894 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2895 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2897 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2898 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2899 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2900 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2901 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2902 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2903 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2905 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2906 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2907 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2909 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2910 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2911 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2912 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2913 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2914 This is the default.
2916 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2917 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2918 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2919 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2920 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2922 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2925 ========================================================================
2926 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2927 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2930 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2931 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2933 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2934 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2935 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2936 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2937 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2939 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2940 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2941 that specifies a non-directory
2944 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2945 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2946 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2947 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2948 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2949 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2950 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2951 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2952 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2953 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2954 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2955 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2956 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2957 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2958 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2959 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2960 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2961 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2962 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2963 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2964 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2965 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2966 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2967 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2969 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2970 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2971 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2973 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2975 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2976 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2978 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2979 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2980 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2981 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2982 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2984 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2985 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2986 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2987 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2988 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2990 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2992 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2993 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2994 * still more portability fixes
2995 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2996 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2998 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3000 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3002 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3004 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3005 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3006 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3007 there is any time remaining
3008 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3010 ========================================================================
3011 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3012 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3014 This package began as the union of the following:
3015 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3017 ========================================================================
3019 Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3021 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3022 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3023 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3024 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3025 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3026 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.