1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
8 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
9 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.iso88591 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
10 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
14 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
15 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
16 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
17 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
20 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
24 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
26 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
27 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
28 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
31 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
35 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
36 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
38 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
40 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
42 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
44 ** Programs no longer installed by default
48 ** Changes in behavior
50 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
51 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
53 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
54 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
56 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
57 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
58 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
62 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
63 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
64 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
65 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
66 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
67 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
68 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
69 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
70 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
71 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
72 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
74 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
77 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
78 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
79 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
81 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
82 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
83 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
88 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
89 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
90 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
91 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
93 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
94 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
95 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
96 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
97 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
98 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
101 ** Remove deprecated options
103 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
104 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
105 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
106 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
107 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
109 ** Improved robustness
111 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
112 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
113 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
114 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
115 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
116 loss of the contents of a/f.
118 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
119 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
123 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
124 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
125 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
127 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
128 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
129 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
130 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
132 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
133 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
134 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
135 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
136 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
137 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
138 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
139 destination is a symlink.
141 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
143 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
144 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
146 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
147 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
149 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
151 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
152 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
154 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
155 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
157 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
160 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
161 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
163 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
164 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
166 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
167 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
168 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
169 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
171 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
172 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
173 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
175 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
176 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
177 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
179 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
180 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
181 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
182 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
184 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
185 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
186 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
188 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
189 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
191 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
192 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
194 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
196 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
197 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
198 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
200 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
201 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
203 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
204 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
206 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
207 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
209 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
210 [present in the original version]
213 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
217 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
219 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
220 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
221 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
223 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
224 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
226 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
230 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
231 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
233 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
234 support but with insufficient /proc support.
236 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
237 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
239 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
240 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
241 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
242 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
243 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
244 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
246 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
247 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
250 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
251 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
253 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
256 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
257 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
258 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
260 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
261 directory is unreadable.
263 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
264 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
265 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
267 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
268 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
269 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
270 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
271 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
274 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
275 Before it would print nothing.
277 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
279 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
280 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
281 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
282 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
283 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
284 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
285 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
286 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
288 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
292 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
293 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
294 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
296 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
297 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
298 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
299 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
302 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
306 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
307 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
308 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
309 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
310 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
311 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
312 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
314 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
315 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
316 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
317 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
318 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
319 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
320 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
321 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
323 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
324 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
325 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
328 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
332 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
333 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
335 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
336 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
337 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
339 ** Improved robustness
341 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
342 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
343 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
346 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
350 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
351 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
352 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
353 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
354 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
356 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
360 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
363 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
367 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
368 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
369 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
370 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
372 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
373 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
375 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
376 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
377 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
380 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
382 ** Improved robustness
384 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
385 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
387 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
388 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
389 or NFS-mounted partition.
391 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
392 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
396 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
397 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
398 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
399 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
400 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
401 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
403 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
404 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
406 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
407 or neglect to report file removal.
409 For the "groups" command:
411 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
412 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
414 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
416 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
418 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
422 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
423 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
426 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
428 ** Changes in behavior
430 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
431 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
432 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
433 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
435 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
436 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
437 a final `./' or `../' component.
439 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
440 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
443 ** Infrastructure changes
445 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
446 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
447 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
448 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
452 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
455 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
456 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
457 dirent.d_type support.
459 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
460 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
462 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
463 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
464 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
465 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
468 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
470 ** Changes in behavior
472 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
476 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
477 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
481 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
482 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
483 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
485 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
486 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
488 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
489 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
491 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
493 ** Improved robustness
495 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
496 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
497 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
499 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
500 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
503 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
504 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
506 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
507 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
509 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
510 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
512 ** Changes in behavior
514 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
515 where the two are distinct.
517 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
518 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
519 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
520 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
521 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
522 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
523 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
524 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
525 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
526 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
527 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
528 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
529 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
530 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
531 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
532 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
533 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
535 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
536 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
537 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
539 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
540 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
541 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
542 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
545 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
546 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
550 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
551 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
552 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
553 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
555 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
556 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
557 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
559 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
560 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
561 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
562 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
563 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
566 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
567 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
569 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
570 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
571 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
572 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
574 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
575 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
576 successful and the output is easier to parse.
578 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
579 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
580 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
581 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
583 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
584 and sticky) with the -m option.
586 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
587 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
588 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
589 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
590 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
592 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
593 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
595 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
599 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
600 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
601 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
602 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
604 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
606 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
608 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
609 silently ignoring one of them.
611 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
612 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
613 containing this change was 5.92.
615 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
616 automatically newline terminated.
618 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
619 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
620 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
621 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
624 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
625 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
626 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
629 ** Scheduled for removal
631 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
632 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
634 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
635 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
636 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
637 command to unlink a directory.
639 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
640 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
641 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
642 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
646 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
647 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
648 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
649 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
650 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
651 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
655 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
656 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
658 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
660 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
661 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
662 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
664 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
665 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
668 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
669 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
671 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
672 list directories before files.
674 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
675 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
676 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
677 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
680 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
682 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
684 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
685 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
686 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
688 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
689 list of NUL-terminated file names.
693 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
694 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
695 usually printing nothing.
697 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
699 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
700 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
701 them with hard-linked directories.
703 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
704 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
705 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
707 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
708 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
709 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
711 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
714 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
715 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
717 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
718 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
720 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
721 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
723 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
724 all command-line arguments.
726 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
728 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
730 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
731 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
733 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
735 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
736 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
737 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
738 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
739 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
741 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
742 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
744 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
745 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
746 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
747 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
749 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
751 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
755 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
756 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
758 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
759 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
761 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
762 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
764 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
765 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
767 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
768 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
770 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
772 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
773 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
774 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
777 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
779 ** Build-related bug fixes
781 installing .mo files would fail
784 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
788 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
790 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
793 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
797 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
798 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
802 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
804 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
805 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
807 ** Deprecated options
809 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
810 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
812 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
816 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
818 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
819 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
820 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
821 conforming to older POSIX versions.
823 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
826 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
832 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
837 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
839 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
841 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
842 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
843 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
845 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
846 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
847 problematic usages. These include:
849 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
850 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
851 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
852 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
853 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
854 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
855 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
856 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
857 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
859 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
860 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
862 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
863 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
864 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
865 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
867 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
868 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
869 between binary and text files.
871 The following programs now always use text input/output:
875 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
879 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
880 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
883 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
885 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
886 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
888 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
889 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
890 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
892 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
894 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
896 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
897 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
898 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
902 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
904 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
905 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
907 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
908 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
909 blocks until F contains N blocks.
913 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
914 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
918 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
919 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
920 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
924 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
925 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
929 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
931 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
933 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
937 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
938 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
939 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
941 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
942 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
943 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
944 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
945 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
947 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
951 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
952 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
953 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
955 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
957 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
958 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
959 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
960 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
962 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
964 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
965 rather than silently wrapping around.
967 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
968 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
970 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
971 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
973 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
974 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
975 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
978 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
980 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
982 ** Improved robustness
984 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
985 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
986 no matter how large the result.
988 ** Improved portability
990 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
991 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
993 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
995 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
996 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
997 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
999 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1000 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1004 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1005 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1007 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1009 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1010 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1011 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1012 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1014 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1015 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1017 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1018 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1019 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1021 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1023 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1024 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1026 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1027 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1029 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1031 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1032 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1034 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1035 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1037 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1038 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1039 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1041 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1043 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1045 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1049 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1051 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1052 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1053 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1055 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1056 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1058 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1059 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1060 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1062 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1063 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1065 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1066 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1067 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1068 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1070 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1071 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1073 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1074 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1075 the file system does not support it.
1077 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1079 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1080 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1082 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1084 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1085 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1087 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1088 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1089 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1090 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1092 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1093 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1096 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1097 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1098 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1099 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1101 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1102 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1103 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1104 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1106 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1107 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1109 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1111 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1112 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1113 reporting incorrect results.
1117 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1118 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1120 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1123 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1125 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1126 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1128 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1129 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1131 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1134 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1135 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1136 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1137 the file name does not look like a page range.
1139 printf has several changes:
1141 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1142 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1144 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1145 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1146 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1148 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1149 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1152 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1153 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1155 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1156 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1158 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1160 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1161 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1163 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1165 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1167 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1168 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1169 when first encountering the directory.
1173 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1174 output; POSIX requires this.
1176 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1177 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1179 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1181 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1182 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1184 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1185 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1187 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1188 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1189 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1190 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1191 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1192 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1193 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1195 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1196 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1197 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1199 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1200 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1202 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1204 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1206 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1207 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1208 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1209 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1211 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1215 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1216 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1217 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1218 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1219 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1221 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1222 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1223 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1225 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1226 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1228 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1229 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1231 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1232 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1233 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1234 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1235 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1237 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1238 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1240 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1241 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1243 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1245 nocreat do not create the output file
1246 excl fail if the output file already exists
1247 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1248 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1250 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1252 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1253 direct use direct I/O for data
1254 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1255 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1256 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1257 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1258 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1260 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1262 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1263 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1266 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1267 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1268 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1269 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1270 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1271 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1273 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1274 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1276 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1279 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1281 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1283 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1284 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1286 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1287 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1288 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1290 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1291 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1292 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1294 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1296 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1297 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1299 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1300 for compatibility with bash.
1302 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1304 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1305 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1306 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1307 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1309 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1310 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1312 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1313 ls supports TABSIZE.
1314 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1315 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1316 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1318 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1321 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1323 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1324 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1325 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1326 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1327 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1328 an offset, not as a file name.
1330 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1331 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1333 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1334 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1336 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1337 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1339 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1340 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1341 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1343 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1344 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1346 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1347 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1351 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1353 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1355 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1359 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1360 or more arguments between partitions.
1362 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1363 holes in the destination.
1365 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1366 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1367 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1368 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1369 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1370 terminates immediately.
1372 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1374 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1376 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1377 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1378 not the empty string.
1380 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1381 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1385 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1386 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1387 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1390 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1397 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1401 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1402 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1404 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1405 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1407 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1408 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1409 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1412 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1416 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1417 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1419 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1420 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1422 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1423 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1424 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1426 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1428 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1431 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1433 ** Configuration option
1435 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1436 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1440 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1441 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1445 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1446 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1447 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1450 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1451 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1452 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1453 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1454 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1455 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1456 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1459 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1463 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1464 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1465 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1467 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1468 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1470 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1472 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1473 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1474 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1475 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1477 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1479 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1480 not just the ones that reference directories
1482 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1483 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1485 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1486 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1487 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1489 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1490 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1491 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1492 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1493 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1494 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1496 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1501 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1502 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1504 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1506 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1508 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1510 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1511 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1513 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1514 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1516 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1518 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1522 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1524 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1526 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1527 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1528 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1529 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1530 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1532 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1533 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1535 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1536 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1538 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1539 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1541 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1542 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1543 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1547 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1548 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1549 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1550 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1551 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1552 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1553 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1554 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1555 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1556 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1557 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1558 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1559 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1560 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1562 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1564 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1565 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1567 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1569 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1571 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1572 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1574 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1576 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1577 without a trailing newline.
1579 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1580 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1582 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1585 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1589 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1591 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1593 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1594 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1595 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1596 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1598 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1600 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1601 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1602 be printed without leading spaces.
1604 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1605 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1610 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1611 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1612 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1614 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1616 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1617 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1619 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1620 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1622 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1623 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1625 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1627 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1629 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1631 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1632 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1634 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1636 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1638 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1639 byte offsets are specified.
1642 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1645 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1648 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1649 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1650 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1651 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1652 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1653 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1654 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1655 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1656 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1657 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1658 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1659 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1660 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1661 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1662 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1663 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1664 directory where M has write access.
1665 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1666 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1667 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1670 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1671 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1672 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1673 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1674 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1675 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1676 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1677 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1678 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1679 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1680 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1681 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1682 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1683 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1684 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1685 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1686 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1687 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1688 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1689 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1690 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1691 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1692 appeared one additional time.
1694 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1695 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1696 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1697 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1700 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1701 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1702 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1703 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1704 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1705 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1706 if there were more than 338.
1708 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1709 - false --help now exits nonzero
1712 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1713 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1714 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1715 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1718 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1719 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1720 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1721 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1722 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1725 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1726 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1727 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1728 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1729 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1730 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1731 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1734 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1735 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1736 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1737 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1738 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1739 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1741 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1742 under certain unusual conditions
1743 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1744 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1747 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1748 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1749 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1750 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1751 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1752 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1753 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1754 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1755 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1756 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1757 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1758 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1759 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1760 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1761 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1762 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1765 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1766 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1769 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1770 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1771 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1772 involving hard-linked directories
1773 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1774 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1775 character-special and block files
1778 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1779 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1780 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1781 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1782 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1783 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1784 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1785 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1786 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1788 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1789 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1790 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1791 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1792 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1793 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1794 specified on the command line.
1795 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1796 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1797 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1798 the first file untouched.
1799 * readlink: new program
1800 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1801 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1802 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1803 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1804 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1805 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1808 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1809 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1810 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1811 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1812 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1813 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1814 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1815 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1816 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1817 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1818 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1819 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1821 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1822 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1823 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1825 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1826 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1827 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1828 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1829 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1830 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1831 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1832 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1835 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1836 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1839 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1840 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1841 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1842 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1843 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1844 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1845 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1848 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1849 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1851 ========================================================================
1852 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1853 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1856 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1858 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1859 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1860 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1861 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1862 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1863 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1864 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1865 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1866 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1867 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1868 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1869 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1871 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1872 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1873 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1874 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1876 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1879 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1881 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1882 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1883 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1884 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1885 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1886 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1887 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1890 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1891 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1892 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1893 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1894 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1895 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1896 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1897 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1898 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1899 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1900 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1901 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1902 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1903 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1904 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1905 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1907 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1908 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1910 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1911 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1912 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1913 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1914 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1915 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1917 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1918 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1919 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1920 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1921 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1922 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1923 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1925 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1926 the source files in the following example:
1927 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1928 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1929 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1930 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1931 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1932 links between source files with --preserve=links
1933 * cp accepts new options:
1934 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1935 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1936 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1937 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1938 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1939 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1940 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1941 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1942 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1944 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1945 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1946 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1947 even though it's older than dest.
1948 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1949 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1950 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1951 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1952 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1954 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1955 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1956 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1957 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1958 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1959 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1960 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1962 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1963 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1964 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1966 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1967 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1968 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1969 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1970 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1971 This is the default.
1973 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1974 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1975 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1976 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1977 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1979 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1982 ========================================================================
1983 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1984 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1987 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1988 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1990 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1991 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1992 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1993 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1994 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1996 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1997 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1998 that specifies a non-directory
2001 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2002 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2003 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2004 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2005 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2006 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2007 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2008 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2009 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2010 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2011 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2012 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2013 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2014 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2015 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2016 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2017 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2018 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2019 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2020 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2021 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2022 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2023 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2024 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2026 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2027 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2028 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2030 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2032 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2033 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2035 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2036 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2037 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2038 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2039 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2041 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2042 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2043 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2044 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2045 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2047 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2049 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2050 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2051 * still more portability fixes
2052 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2053 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2055 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2057 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2059 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2061 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2062 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2063 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2064 there is any time remaining
2065 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2067 ========================================================================
2068 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2069 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2071 This package began as the union of the following:
2072 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2074 ========================================================================
2076 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2079 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2080 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2081 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2082 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2083 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2084 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.