1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.?? (2008-??-??) [stable]
7 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
8 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
10 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
11 in more cases when a directory is empty.
15 mkdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout, not stderr.
18 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
22 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
23 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
26 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
30 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
31 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
32 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
34 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
35 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
36 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
37 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
41 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
42 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
43 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
44 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
47 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
51 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
53 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
54 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
55 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
58 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
62 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
63 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
65 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
67 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
69 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
71 ** Programs no longer installed by default
75 ** Changes in behavior
77 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
78 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
80 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
81 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
83 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
84 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
85 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
89 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
90 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
91 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
92 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
93 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
94 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
95 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
96 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
97 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
98 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
99 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
101 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
104 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
105 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
106 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
108 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
109 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
110 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
115 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
116 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
117 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
118 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
120 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
121 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
122 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
123 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
124 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
125 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
126 of "make check" fail.
128 ** Remove deprecated options
130 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
131 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
132 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
133 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
134 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
136 ** Improved robustness
138 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
139 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
140 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
141 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
142 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
143 loss of the contents of a/f.
145 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
146 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
150 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
151 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
152 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
154 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
155 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
156 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
157 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
159 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
160 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
161 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
162 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
163 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
164 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
165 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
166 destination is a symlink.
168 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
170 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
171 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
173 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
174 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
176 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
178 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
179 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
181 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
182 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
184 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
187 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
188 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
190 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
191 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
193 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
194 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
195 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
196 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
198 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
199 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
200 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
202 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
203 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
204 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
206 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
207 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
208 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
209 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
211 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
212 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
213 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
215 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
216 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
218 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
219 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
221 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
223 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
224 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
225 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
227 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
228 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
230 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
231 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
233 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
234 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
236 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
237 [present in the original version]
240 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
244 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
246 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
247 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
248 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
250 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
251 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
253 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
257 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
258 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
260 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
261 support but with insufficient /proc support.
263 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
264 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
266 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
267 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
268 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
269 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
270 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
271 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
273 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
274 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
277 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
278 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
280 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
283 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
284 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
285 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
287 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
288 directory is unreadable.
290 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
291 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
292 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
294 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
295 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
296 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
297 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
298 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
301 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
302 Before it would print nothing.
304 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
306 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
307 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
308 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
309 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
310 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
311 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
312 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
313 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
315 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
319 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
320 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
321 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
323 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
324 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
325 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
326 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
329 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
333 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
334 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
335 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
336 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
337 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
338 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
339 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
341 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
342 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
343 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
344 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
345 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
346 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
347 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
348 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
350 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
351 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
352 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
355 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
359 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
360 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
362 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
363 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
364 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
366 ** Improved robustness
368 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
369 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
370 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
373 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
377 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
378 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
379 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
380 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
381 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
383 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
387 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
390 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
394 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
395 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
396 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
397 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
399 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
400 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
402 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
403 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
404 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
407 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
409 ** Improved robustness
411 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
412 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
414 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
415 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
416 or NFS-mounted partition.
418 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
419 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
423 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
424 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
425 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
426 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
427 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
428 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
430 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
431 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
433 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
434 or neglect to report file removal.
436 For the "groups" command:
438 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
439 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
441 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
443 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
445 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
449 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
450 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
453 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
455 ** Changes in behavior
457 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
458 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
459 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
460 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
462 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
463 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
464 a final `./' or `../' component.
466 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
467 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
470 ** Infrastructure changes
472 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
473 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
474 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
475 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
479 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
482 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
483 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
484 dirent.d_type support.
486 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
487 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
489 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
490 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
491 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
492 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
495 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
497 ** Changes in behavior
499 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
503 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
504 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
508 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
509 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
510 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
512 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
513 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
515 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
516 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
518 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
520 ** Improved robustness
522 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
523 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
524 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
526 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
527 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
530 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
531 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
533 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
534 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
536 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
537 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
539 ** Changes in behavior
541 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
542 where the two are distinct.
544 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
545 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
546 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
547 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
548 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
549 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
550 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
551 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
552 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
553 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
554 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
555 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
556 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
557 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
558 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
559 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
560 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
562 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
563 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
564 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
566 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
567 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
568 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
569 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
572 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
573 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
577 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
578 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
579 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
580 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
582 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
583 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
584 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
586 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
587 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
588 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
589 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
590 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
593 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
594 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
596 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
597 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
598 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
599 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
601 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
602 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
603 successful and the output is easier to parse.
605 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
606 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
607 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
608 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
610 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
611 and sticky) with the -m option.
613 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
614 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
615 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
616 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
617 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
619 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
620 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
622 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
626 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
627 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
628 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
629 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
631 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
633 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
635 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
636 silently ignoring one of them.
638 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
639 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
640 containing this change was 5.92.
642 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
643 automatically newline terminated.
645 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
646 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
647 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
648 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
651 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
652 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
653 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
656 ** Scheduled for removal
658 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
659 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
661 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
662 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
663 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
664 command to unlink a directory.
666 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
667 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
668 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
669 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
673 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
674 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
675 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
676 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
677 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
678 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
682 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
683 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
685 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
687 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
688 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
689 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
691 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
692 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
695 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
696 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
698 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
699 list directories before files.
701 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
702 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
703 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
704 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
707 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
709 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
711 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
712 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
713 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
715 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
716 list of NUL-terminated file names.
720 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
721 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
722 usually printing nothing.
724 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
726 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
727 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
728 them with hard-linked directories.
730 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
731 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
732 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
734 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
735 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
736 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
738 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
741 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
742 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
744 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
745 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
747 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
748 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
750 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
751 all command-line arguments.
753 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
755 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
757 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
758 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
760 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
762 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
763 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
764 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
765 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
766 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
768 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
769 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
771 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
772 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
773 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
774 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
776 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
778 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
782 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
783 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
785 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
786 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
788 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
789 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
791 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
792 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
794 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
795 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
797 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
799 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
800 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
801 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
804 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
806 ** Build-related bug fixes
808 installing .mo files would fail
811 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
815 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
817 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
820 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
824 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
825 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
829 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
831 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
832 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
834 ** Deprecated options
836 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
837 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
839 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
843 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
845 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
846 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
847 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
848 conforming to older POSIX versions.
850 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
853 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
859 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
864 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
866 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
868 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
869 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
870 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
872 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
873 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
874 problematic usages. These include:
876 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
877 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
878 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
879 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
880 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
881 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
882 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
883 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
884 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
886 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
887 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
889 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
890 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
891 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
892 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
894 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
895 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
896 between binary and text files.
898 The following programs now always use text input/output:
902 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
906 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
907 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
910 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
912 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
913 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
915 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
916 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
917 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
919 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
921 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
923 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
924 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
925 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
929 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
931 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
932 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
934 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
935 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
936 blocks until F contains N blocks.
940 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
941 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
945 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
946 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
947 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
951 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
952 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
956 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
958 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
960 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
964 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
965 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
966 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
968 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
969 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
970 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
971 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
972 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
974 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
978 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
979 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
980 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
982 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
984 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
985 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
986 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
987 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
989 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
991 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
992 rather than silently wrapping around.
994 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
995 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
997 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
998 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1000 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1001 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1002 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1003 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1005 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1007 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1009 ** Improved robustness
1011 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1012 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1013 no matter how large the result.
1015 ** Improved portability
1017 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1018 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1020 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1022 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1023 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1024 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1026 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1027 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1031 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1032 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1034 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1036 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1037 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1038 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1039 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1041 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1042 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1044 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1045 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1046 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1048 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1050 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1051 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1053 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1054 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1056 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1058 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1059 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1061 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1062 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1064 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1065 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1066 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1068 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1070 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1072 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1076 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1078 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1079 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1080 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1082 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1083 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1085 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1086 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1087 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1089 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1090 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1092 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1093 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1094 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1095 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1097 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1098 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1100 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1101 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1102 the file system does not support it.
1104 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1106 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1107 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1109 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1111 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1112 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1114 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1115 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1116 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1117 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1119 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1120 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1123 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1124 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1125 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1126 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1128 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1129 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1130 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1131 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1133 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1134 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1136 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1138 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1139 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1140 reporting incorrect results.
1144 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1145 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1147 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1150 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1152 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1153 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1155 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1156 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1158 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1161 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1162 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1163 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1164 the file name does not look like a page range.
1166 printf has several changes:
1168 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1169 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1171 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1172 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1173 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1175 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1176 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1179 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1180 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1182 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1183 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1185 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1187 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1188 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1190 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1192 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1194 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1195 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1196 when first encountering the directory.
1200 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1201 output; POSIX requires this.
1203 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1204 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1206 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1208 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1209 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1211 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1212 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1214 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1215 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1216 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1217 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1218 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1219 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1220 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1222 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1223 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1224 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1226 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1227 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1229 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1231 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1233 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1234 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1235 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1236 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1238 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1242 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1243 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1244 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1245 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1246 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1248 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1249 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1250 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1252 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1253 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1255 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1256 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1258 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1259 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1260 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1261 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1262 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1264 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1265 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1267 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1268 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1270 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1272 nocreat do not create the output file
1273 excl fail if the output file already exists
1274 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1275 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1277 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1279 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1280 direct use direct I/O for data
1281 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1282 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1283 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1284 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1285 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1287 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1289 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1290 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1293 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1294 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1295 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1296 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1297 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1298 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1300 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1301 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1303 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1306 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1308 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1310 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1311 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1313 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1314 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1315 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1317 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1318 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1319 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1321 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1323 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1324 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1326 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1327 for compatibility with bash.
1329 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1331 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1332 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1333 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1334 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1336 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1337 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1339 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1340 ls supports TABSIZE.
1341 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1342 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1343 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1345 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1348 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1350 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1351 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1352 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1353 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1354 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1355 an offset, not as a file name.
1357 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1358 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1360 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1361 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1363 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1364 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1366 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1367 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1368 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1370 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1371 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1373 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1374 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1378 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1380 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1382 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1386 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1387 or more arguments between partitions.
1389 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1390 holes in the destination.
1392 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1393 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1394 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1395 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1396 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1397 terminates immediately.
1399 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1401 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1403 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1404 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1405 not the empty string.
1407 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1408 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1412 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1413 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1414 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1417 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1424 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1428 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1429 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1431 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1432 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1434 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1435 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1436 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1439 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1443 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1444 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1446 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1447 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1449 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1450 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1451 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1453 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1455 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1458 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1460 ** Configuration option
1462 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1463 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1467 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1468 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1472 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1473 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1474 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1477 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1478 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1479 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1480 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1481 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1482 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1483 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1486 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1490 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1491 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1492 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1494 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1495 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1497 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1499 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1500 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1501 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1502 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1504 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1506 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1507 not just the ones that reference directories
1509 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1510 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1512 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1513 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1514 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1516 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1517 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1518 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1519 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1520 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1521 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1523 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1528 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1529 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1531 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1533 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1535 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1537 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1538 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1540 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1541 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1543 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1545 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1549 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1551 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1553 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1554 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1555 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1556 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1557 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1559 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1560 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1562 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1563 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1565 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1566 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1568 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1569 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1570 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1574 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1575 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1576 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1577 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1578 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1579 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1580 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1581 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1582 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1583 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1584 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1585 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1586 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1587 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1589 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1591 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1592 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1594 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1596 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1598 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1599 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1601 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1603 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1604 without a trailing newline.
1606 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1607 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1609 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1612 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1616 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1618 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1620 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1621 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1622 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1623 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1625 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1627 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1628 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1629 be printed without leading spaces.
1631 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1632 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1637 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1638 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1639 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1641 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1643 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1644 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1646 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1647 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1649 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1650 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1652 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1654 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1656 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1658 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1659 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1661 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1663 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1665 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1666 byte offsets are specified.
1669 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1672 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1675 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1676 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1677 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1678 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1679 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1680 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1681 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1682 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1683 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1684 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1685 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1686 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1687 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1688 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1689 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1690 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1691 directory where M has write access.
1692 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1693 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1694 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1697 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1698 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1699 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1700 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1701 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1702 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1703 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1704 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1705 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1706 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1707 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1708 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1709 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1710 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1711 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1712 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1713 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1714 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1715 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1716 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1717 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1718 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1719 appeared one additional time.
1721 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1722 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1723 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1724 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1727 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1728 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1729 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1730 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1731 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1732 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1733 if there were more than 338.
1735 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1736 - false --help now exits nonzero
1739 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1740 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1741 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1742 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1745 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1746 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1747 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1748 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1749 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1752 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1753 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1754 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1755 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1756 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1757 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1758 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1761 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1762 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1763 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1764 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1765 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1766 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1768 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1769 under certain unusual conditions
1770 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1771 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1774 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1775 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1776 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1777 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1778 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1779 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1780 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1781 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1782 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1783 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1784 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1785 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1786 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1787 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1788 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1789 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1792 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1793 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1796 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1797 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1798 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1799 involving hard-linked directories
1800 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1801 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1802 character-special and block files
1805 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1806 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1807 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1808 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1809 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1810 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1811 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1812 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1813 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1815 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1816 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1817 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1818 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1819 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1820 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1821 specified on the command line.
1822 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1823 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1824 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1825 the first file untouched.
1826 * readlink: new program
1827 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1828 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1829 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1830 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1831 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1832 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1835 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1836 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1837 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1838 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1839 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1840 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1841 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1842 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1843 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1844 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1845 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1846 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1848 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1849 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1850 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1852 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1853 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1854 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1855 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1856 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1857 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1858 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1859 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1862 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1863 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1866 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1867 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1868 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1869 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1870 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1871 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1872 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1875 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1876 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1878 ========================================================================
1879 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1880 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1883 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1885 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1886 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1887 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1888 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1889 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1890 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1891 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1892 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1893 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1894 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1895 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1896 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1898 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1899 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1900 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1901 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1903 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1906 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1908 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1909 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1910 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1911 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1912 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1913 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1914 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1917 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1918 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1919 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1920 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1921 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1922 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1923 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1924 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1925 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1926 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1927 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1928 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1929 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1930 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1931 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1932 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1934 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1935 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1937 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1938 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1939 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1940 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1941 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1942 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1944 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1945 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1946 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1947 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1948 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1949 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1950 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1952 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1953 the source files in the following example:
1954 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1955 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1956 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1957 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1958 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1959 links between source files with --preserve=links
1960 * cp accepts new options:
1961 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1962 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1963 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1964 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1965 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1966 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1967 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1968 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1969 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1971 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1972 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1973 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1974 even though it's older than dest.
1975 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1976 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1977 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1978 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1979 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1981 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1982 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1983 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1984 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1985 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1986 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1987 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1989 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1990 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1991 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1993 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1994 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1995 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1996 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1997 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1998 This is the default.
2000 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2001 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2002 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2003 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2004 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2006 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2009 ========================================================================
2010 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2011 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2014 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2015 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2017 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2018 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2019 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2020 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2021 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2023 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2024 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2025 that specifies a non-directory
2028 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2029 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2030 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2031 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2032 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2033 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2034 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2035 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2036 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2037 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2038 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2039 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2040 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2041 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2042 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2043 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2044 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2045 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2046 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2047 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2048 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2049 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2050 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2051 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2053 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2054 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2055 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2057 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2059 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2060 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2062 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2063 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2064 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2065 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2066 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2068 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2069 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2070 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2071 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2072 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2074 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2076 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2077 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2078 * still more portability fixes
2079 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2080 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2082 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2084 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2086 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2088 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2089 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2090 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2091 there is any time remaining
2092 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2094 ========================================================================
2095 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2096 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2098 This package began as the union of the following:
2099 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2101 ========================================================================
2103 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2106 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2107 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2108 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2109 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2110 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2111 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.