1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
8 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
9 and libraries tested at configure time.
10 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
12 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
13 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
15 dd now returns non-zero status if it encountered a write error while
16 printing a summary to stderr.
17 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
21 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
22 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
24 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
28 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
29 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
31 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
32 before data copying has started.
34 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
35 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
37 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
38 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
39 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
40 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
42 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
43 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
44 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
45 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
47 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
52 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
53 for its standard streams.
55 ** Changes in behavior
57 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
58 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
59 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
60 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
61 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
62 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
66 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
67 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
71 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
73 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
74 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
77 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
79 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
80 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
82 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
83 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
86 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
90 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
91 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
92 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
93 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
95 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
96 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
97 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
98 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
99 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
104 make check: two tests have been corrected
108 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
109 inherited from gnulib.
112 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
116 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
117 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
118 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
119 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
121 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
122 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
124 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
126 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
127 systems without xattr support.
129 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
130 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
131 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
133 ** Changes in behavior
135 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
136 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
137 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
138 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
140 ** Improved robustness
142 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
143 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
144 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
145 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
146 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
147 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
148 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
149 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
150 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
154 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
155 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
157 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
158 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
159 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
160 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
161 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
164 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
168 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
169 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
170 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
174 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
175 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
176 data was read, or on process exit.
177 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
179 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
180 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
181 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
182 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
184 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
185 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
186 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
187 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
189 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
190 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
192 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
193 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
195 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
196 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
197 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
199 ** Changes in behavior
201 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
202 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
203 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
205 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
206 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
208 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
209 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
210 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
213 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
217 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
219 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
220 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
221 install: Never copies xattrs
223 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
224 from overwriting any existing destination file
226 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
227 mode where this feature is available.
229 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
230 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
231 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
232 do not modify the destination at all.
234 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
236 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
240 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
241 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
243 cp uses much less memory in some situations
245 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
246 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
248 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
249 processing the first file name
251 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
252 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
253 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
254 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
256 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
257 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
259 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
260 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
263 ** Changes in behavior
265 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
266 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
268 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
269 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
270 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
272 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
273 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
275 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
277 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
278 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
279 is still marked with a '+'.
282 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
286 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
287 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
291 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
292 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
293 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
294 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
295 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
296 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
298 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
299 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
301 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
302 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
304 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
306 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
307 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
308 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
310 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
311 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
313 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
314 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
315 used to factor large numbers.
317 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
320 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
322 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
324 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
325 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
327 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
328 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
329 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
330 maximum command-line (argv) length.
332 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
333 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
334 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
336 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
337 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
341 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
343 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
344 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
346 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
347 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
349 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
351 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
352 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
356 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
357 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
358 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
360 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
362 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
363 no matter how many files are in a given directory
365 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
366 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
367 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
369 ** Changes in behavior
371 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
372 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
375 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
379 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
381 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
382 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
383 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
385 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
386 with no USERNAME argument.
388 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
389 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
390 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
392 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
393 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
394 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
395 number of fields for some inputs.
397 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
398 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
400 ** Changes in behavior
402 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
403 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
406 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
410 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
412 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
413 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
414 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
415 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
417 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
418 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
420 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
421 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
423 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
424 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
426 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
427 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
428 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
429 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
431 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
432 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
433 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
434 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
435 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
436 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
438 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
439 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
441 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
442 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
443 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
445 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
446 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
448 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
449 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
451 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
452 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
453 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
454 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
456 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
457 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
459 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
460 in more cases when a directory is empty.
462 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
463 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
464 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
468 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
469 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
471 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
472 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
473 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
474 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
478 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
479 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
481 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
483 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
487 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
488 which have negative errno values.
492 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
496 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
500 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
501 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
504 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
508 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
509 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
510 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
512 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
513 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
514 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
515 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
519 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
520 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
521 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
522 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
525 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
529 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
531 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
532 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
533 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
536 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
540 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
541 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
543 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
545 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
547 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
549 ** Programs no longer installed by default
553 ** Changes in behavior
555 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
556 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
558 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
559 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
561 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
562 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
563 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
567 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
568 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
569 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
570 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
571 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
572 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
573 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
574 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
575 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
576 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
577 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
579 The following commands and options now support the standard size
580 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
581 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
584 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
587 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
588 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
589 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
591 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
592 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
593 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
598 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
599 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
600 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
601 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
603 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
604 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
605 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
606 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
607 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
608 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
609 of "make check" fail.
611 ** Remove deprecated options
613 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
614 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
615 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
616 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
617 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
619 ** Improved robustness
621 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
622 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
623 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
624 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
625 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
626 loss of the contents of a/f.
628 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
629 in its 35-colon command-line argument
633 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
634 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
635 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
637 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
638 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
639 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
640 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
642 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
643 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
644 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
645 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
646 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
647 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
648 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
649 destination is a symlink.
651 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
653 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
654 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
656 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
657 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
659 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
661 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
662 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
664 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
665 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
667 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
670 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
671 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
673 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
674 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
676 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
677 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
678 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
679 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
681 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
682 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
683 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
685 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
686 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
687 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
689 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
690 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
691 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
692 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
694 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
695 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
696 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
698 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
699 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
701 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
702 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
704 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
706 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
707 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
708 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
710 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
711 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
713 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
714 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
716 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
717 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
719 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
720 [present in the original version]
723 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
727 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
729 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
730 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
731 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
733 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
734 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
736 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
740 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
741 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
743 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
744 support but with insufficient /proc support.
746 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
747 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
749 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
750 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
751 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
752 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
753 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
754 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
756 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
757 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
760 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
761 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
763 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
766 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
767 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
768 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
770 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
771 directory is unreadable.
773 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
774 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
775 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
777 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
778 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
779 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
780 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
781 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
784 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
785 Before it would print nothing.
787 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
789 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
790 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
791 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
792 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
793 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
794 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
795 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
796 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
798 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
802 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
803 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
804 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
806 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
807 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
808 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
809 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
812 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
816 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
817 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
818 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
819 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
820 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
821 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
822 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
824 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
825 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
826 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
827 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
828 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
829 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
830 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
831 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
833 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
834 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
835 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
838 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
842 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
843 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
845 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
846 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
847 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
849 ** Improved robustness
851 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
852 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
853 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
856 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
860 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
861 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
862 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
863 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
864 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
866 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
870 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
873 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
877 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
878 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
879 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
880 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
882 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
883 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
885 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
886 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
887 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
890 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
892 ** Improved robustness
894 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
895 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
897 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
898 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
899 or NFS-mounted partition.
901 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
902 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
906 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
907 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
908 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
909 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
910 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
911 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
913 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
914 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
916 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
917 or neglect to report file removal.
919 For the "groups" command:
921 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
922 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
924 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
926 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
928 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
932 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
933 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
936 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
938 ** Changes in behavior
940 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
941 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
942 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
943 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
945 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
946 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
947 a final `./' or `../' component.
949 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
950 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
953 ** Infrastructure changes
955 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
956 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
957 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
958 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
962 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
965 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
966 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
967 dirent.d_type support.
969 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
970 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
972 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
973 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
974 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
975 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
978 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
980 ** Changes in behavior
982 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
986 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
987 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
991 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
992 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
993 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
995 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
996 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
998 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
999 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1001 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1003 ** Improved robustness
1005 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1006 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1007 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1009 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1010 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1013 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1014 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1016 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1017 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1019 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1020 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1022 ** Changes in behavior
1024 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1025 where the two are distinct.
1027 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1028 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1029 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1030 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1031 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1032 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1033 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1034 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1035 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1036 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1037 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1038 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1039 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1040 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1041 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1042 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1043 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1045 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1046 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1047 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1049 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1050 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1051 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1052 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1055 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1056 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1060 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1061 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1062 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1063 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1065 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1066 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1067 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1069 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1070 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1071 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1072 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1073 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1076 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1077 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1079 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1080 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1081 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1082 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1084 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1085 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1086 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1088 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1089 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1090 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1091 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1093 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1094 and sticky) with the -m option.
1096 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1097 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1098 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1099 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1100 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1102 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1103 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1105 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1109 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1110 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1111 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1112 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1114 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1116 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1118 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1119 silently ignoring one of them.
1121 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1122 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1123 containing this change was 5.92.
1125 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1126 automatically newline terminated.
1128 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1129 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1130 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1131 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1134 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1135 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1136 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1139 ** Scheduled for removal
1141 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1142 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1144 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1145 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1146 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1147 command to unlink a directory.
1149 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1150 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1151 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1152 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1156 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1157 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1158 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1159 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1160 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1161 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1165 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1166 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1168 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1170 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1171 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1172 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1174 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1175 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1178 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1179 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1181 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1182 list directories before files.
1184 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1185 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1186 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1187 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1190 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1192 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1194 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1195 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1196 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1198 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1199 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1203 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1204 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1205 usually printing nothing.
1207 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1209 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1210 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1211 them with hard-linked directories.
1213 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1214 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1215 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1217 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1218 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1219 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1221 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1224 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1225 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1227 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1228 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1230 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1231 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1233 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1234 all command-line arguments.
1236 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1238 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1240 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1241 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1243 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1245 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1246 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1247 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1248 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1249 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1251 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1252 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1254 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1255 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1256 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1257 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1259 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1261 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1265 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1266 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1268 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1269 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1271 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1272 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1274 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1275 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1277 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1278 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1280 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1282 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1283 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1284 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1287 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1289 ** Build-related bug fixes
1291 installing .mo files would fail
1294 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1298 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1300 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1303 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1307 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1308 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1312 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1314 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1315 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1317 ** Deprecated options
1319 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1320 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1322 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1326 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1328 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1329 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1330 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1331 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1333 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1336 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1342 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1347 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1349 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1351 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1352 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1353 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1355 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1356 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1357 problematic usages. These include:
1359 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1360 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1361 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1362 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1363 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1364 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1365 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1366 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1367 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1369 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1370 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1372 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1373 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1374 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1375 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1377 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1378 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1379 between binary and text files.
1381 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1385 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1389 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1390 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1392 head tac tail tee tr
1393 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1395 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1396 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1398 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1399 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1400 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1402 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1404 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1406 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1407 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1408 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1412 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1414 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1415 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1417 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1418 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1419 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1423 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1424 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1428 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1429 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1430 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1434 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1435 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1439 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1441 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1443 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1447 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1448 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1449 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1451 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1452 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1453 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1454 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1455 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1457 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1461 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1462 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1463 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1465 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1467 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1468 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1469 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1470 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1472 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1474 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1475 rather than silently wrapping around.
1477 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1478 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1480 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1481 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1483 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1484 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1485 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1486 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1488 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1490 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1492 ** Improved robustness
1494 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1495 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1496 no matter how large the result.
1498 ** Improved portability
1500 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1501 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1503 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1505 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1506 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1507 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1509 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1510 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1514 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1515 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1517 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1519 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1520 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1521 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1522 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1524 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1525 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1527 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1528 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1529 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1531 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1533 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1534 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1536 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1537 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1539 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1541 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1542 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1544 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1545 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1547 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1548 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1549 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1551 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1553 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1555 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1559 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1561 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1562 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1563 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1565 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1566 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1568 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1569 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1570 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1572 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1573 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1575 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1576 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1577 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1578 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1580 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1581 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1583 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1584 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1585 the file system does not support it.
1587 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1589 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1590 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1592 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1594 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1595 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1597 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1598 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1599 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1600 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1602 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1603 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1606 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1607 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1608 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1609 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1611 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1612 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1613 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1614 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1616 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1617 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1619 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1621 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1622 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1623 reporting incorrect results.
1627 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1628 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1630 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1633 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1635 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1636 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1638 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1639 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1641 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1644 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1645 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1646 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1647 the file name does not look like a page range.
1649 printf has several changes:
1651 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1652 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1654 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1655 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1656 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1658 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1659 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1662 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1663 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1665 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1666 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1668 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1670 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1671 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1673 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1675 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1677 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1678 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1679 when first encountering the directory.
1683 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1684 output; POSIX requires this.
1686 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1687 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1689 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1691 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1692 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1694 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1695 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1697 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1698 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1699 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1700 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1701 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1702 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1703 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1705 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1706 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1707 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1709 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1710 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1712 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1714 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1716 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1717 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1718 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1719 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1721 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1725 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1726 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1727 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1728 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1729 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1731 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1732 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1733 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1735 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1736 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1738 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1739 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1741 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1742 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1743 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1744 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1745 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1747 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1748 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1750 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1751 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1753 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1755 nocreat do not create the output file
1756 excl fail if the output file already exists
1757 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1758 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1760 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1762 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1763 direct use direct I/O for data
1764 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1765 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1766 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1767 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1768 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1770 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1772 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1773 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1776 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1777 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1778 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1779 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1780 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1781 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1783 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1784 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1786 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1789 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1791 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1793 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1794 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1796 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1797 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1798 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1800 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1801 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1802 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1804 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1806 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1807 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1809 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1810 for compatibility with bash.
1812 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1814 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1815 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1816 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1817 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1819 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1820 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1822 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1823 ls supports TABSIZE.
1824 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1825 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1826 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1828 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1831 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1833 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1834 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1835 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1836 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1837 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1838 an offset, not as a file name.
1840 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1841 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1843 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1844 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1846 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1847 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1849 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1850 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1851 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1853 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1854 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1856 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1857 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1861 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1863 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1865 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1869 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1870 or more arguments between partitions.
1872 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1873 holes in the destination.
1875 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1876 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1877 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1878 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1879 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1880 terminates immediately.
1882 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1884 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1886 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1887 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1888 not the empty string.
1890 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1891 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1895 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1896 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1897 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1900 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1907 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1911 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1912 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1914 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1915 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1917 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1918 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1919 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1922 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1926 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1927 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1929 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1930 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1932 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1933 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1934 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1936 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1938 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1941 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1943 ** Configuration option
1945 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1946 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1950 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1951 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1955 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1956 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1957 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1960 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1961 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1962 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1963 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1964 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1965 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1966 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1969 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1973 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1974 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1975 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1977 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1978 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1980 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1982 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1983 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1984 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1985 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1987 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1989 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1990 not just the ones that reference directories
1992 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1993 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1995 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1996 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1997 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1999 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2000 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2001 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2002 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2003 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2004 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2006 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2011 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2012 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2014 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2016 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2018 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2020 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2021 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2023 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2024 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2026 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2028 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2032 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2034 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2036 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2037 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2038 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2039 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2040 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2042 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2043 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2045 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2046 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2048 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2049 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2051 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2052 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2053 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2057 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2058 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2059 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2060 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2061 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2062 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2063 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2064 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2065 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2066 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2067 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2068 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2069 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2070 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2072 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2074 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2075 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2077 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2079 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2081 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2082 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2084 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2086 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2087 without a trailing newline.
2089 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2090 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2092 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2095 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2099 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2101 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2103 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2104 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2105 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2106 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2108 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2110 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2111 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2112 be printed without leading spaces.
2114 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2115 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2120 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2121 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2122 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2124 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2126 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2127 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2129 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2130 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2132 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2133 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2135 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2137 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2139 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2141 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2142 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2144 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2146 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2148 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2149 byte offsets are specified.
2152 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2155 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2158 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2159 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2160 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2161 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2162 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2163 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2164 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2165 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2166 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2167 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2168 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2169 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2170 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2171 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2172 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2173 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2174 directory where M has write access.
2175 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2176 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2177 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2180 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2181 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2182 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2183 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2184 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2185 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2186 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2187 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2188 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2189 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2190 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2191 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2192 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2193 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2194 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2195 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2196 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2197 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2198 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2199 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2200 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2201 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2202 appeared one additional time.
2204 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2205 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2206 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2207 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2210 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2211 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2212 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2213 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2214 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2215 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2216 if there were more than 338.
2218 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2219 - false --help now exits nonzero
2222 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2223 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2224 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2225 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2228 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2229 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2230 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2231 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2232 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2235 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2236 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2237 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2238 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2239 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2240 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2241 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2244 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2245 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2246 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2247 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2248 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2249 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2251 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2252 under certain unusual conditions
2253 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2254 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2257 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2258 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2259 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2260 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2261 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2262 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2263 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2264 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2265 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2266 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2267 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2268 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2269 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2270 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2271 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2272 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2275 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2276 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2279 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2280 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2281 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2282 involving hard-linked directories
2283 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2284 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2285 character-special and block files
2288 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2289 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2290 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2291 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2292 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2293 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2294 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2295 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2296 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2298 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2299 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2300 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2301 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2302 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2303 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2304 specified on the command line.
2305 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2306 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2307 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2308 the first file untouched.
2309 * readlink: new program
2310 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2311 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2312 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2313 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2314 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2315 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2318 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2319 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2320 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2321 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2322 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2323 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2324 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2325 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2326 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2327 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2328 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2329 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2331 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2332 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2333 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2335 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2336 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2337 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2338 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2339 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2340 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2341 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2342 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2345 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2346 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2349 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2350 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2351 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2352 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2353 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2354 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2355 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2358 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2359 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2361 ========================================================================
2362 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2363 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2366 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2368 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2369 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2370 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2371 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2372 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2373 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2374 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2375 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2376 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2377 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2378 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2379 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2381 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2382 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2383 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2384 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2386 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2389 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2391 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2392 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2393 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2394 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2395 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2396 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2397 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2400 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2401 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2402 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2403 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2404 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2405 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2406 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2407 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2408 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2409 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2410 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2411 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2412 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2413 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2414 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2415 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2417 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2418 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2420 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2421 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2422 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2423 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2424 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2425 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2427 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2428 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2429 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2430 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2431 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2432 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2433 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2435 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2436 the source files in the following example:
2437 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2438 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2439 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2440 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2441 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2442 links between source files with --preserve=links
2443 * cp accepts new options:
2444 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2445 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2446 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2447 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2448 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2449 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2450 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2451 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2452 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2454 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2455 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2456 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2457 even though it's older than dest.
2458 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2459 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2460 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2461 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2462 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2464 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2465 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2466 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2467 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2468 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2469 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2470 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2472 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2473 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2474 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2476 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2477 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2478 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2479 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2480 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2481 This is the default.
2483 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2484 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2485 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2486 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2487 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2489 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2492 ========================================================================
2493 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2494 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2497 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2498 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2500 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2501 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2502 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2503 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2504 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2506 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2507 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2508 that specifies a non-directory
2511 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2512 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2513 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2514 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2515 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2516 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2517 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2518 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2519 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2520 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2521 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2522 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2523 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2524 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2525 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2526 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2527 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2528 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2529 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2530 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2531 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2532 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2533 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2534 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2536 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2537 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2538 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2540 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2542 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2543 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2545 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2546 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2547 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2548 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2549 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2551 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2552 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2553 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2554 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2555 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2557 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2559 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2560 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2561 * still more portability fixes
2562 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2563 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2565 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2567 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2569 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2571 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2572 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2573 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2574 there is any time remaining
2575 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2577 ========================================================================
2578 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2579 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2581 This package began as the union of the following:
2582 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2584 ========================================================================
2586 Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2588 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2589 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2590 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2591 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2592 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2593 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.