1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.?? (2008-??-??) [stable]
7 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
9 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
10 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
12 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
13 in more cases when a directory is empty.
15 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
16 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
17 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
21 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
22 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
26 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
30 mkdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout, not stderr.
33 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
37 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
38 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
41 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
45 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
46 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
47 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
49 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
50 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
51 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
52 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
56 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
57 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
58 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
59 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
62 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
66 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
68 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
69 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
70 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
73 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
77 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
78 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
80 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
82 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
84 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
86 ** Programs no longer installed by default
90 ** Changes in behavior
92 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
93 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
95 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
96 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
98 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
99 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
100 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
104 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
105 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
106 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
107 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
108 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
109 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
110 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
111 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
112 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
113 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
114 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
116 The following commands and options now support the standard size
117 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
118 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
121 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
124 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
125 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
126 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
128 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
129 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
130 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
135 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
136 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
137 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
138 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
140 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
141 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
142 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
143 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
144 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
145 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
146 of "make check" fail.
148 ** Remove deprecated options
150 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
151 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
152 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
153 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
154 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
156 ** Improved robustness
158 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
159 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
160 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
161 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
162 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
163 loss of the contents of a/f.
165 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
166 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
170 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
171 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
172 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
174 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
175 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
176 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
177 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
179 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
180 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
181 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
182 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
183 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
184 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
185 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
186 destination is a symlink.
188 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
190 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
191 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
193 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
194 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
196 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
198 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
199 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
201 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
202 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
204 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
207 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
208 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
210 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
211 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
213 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
214 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
215 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
216 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
218 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
219 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
220 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
222 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
223 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
224 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
226 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
227 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
228 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
229 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
231 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
232 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
233 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
235 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
236 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
238 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
239 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
241 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
243 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
244 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
245 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
247 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
248 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
250 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
251 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
253 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
254 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
256 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
257 [present in the original version]
260 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
264 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
266 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
267 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
268 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
270 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
271 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
273 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
277 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
278 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
280 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
281 support but with insufficient /proc support.
283 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
284 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
286 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
287 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
288 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
289 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
290 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
291 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
293 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
294 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
297 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
298 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
300 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
303 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
304 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
305 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
307 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
308 directory is unreadable.
310 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
311 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
312 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
314 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
315 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
316 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
317 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
318 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
321 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
322 Before it would print nothing.
324 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
326 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
327 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
328 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
329 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
330 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
331 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
332 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
333 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
335 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
339 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
340 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
341 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
343 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
344 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
345 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
346 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
349 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
353 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
354 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
355 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
356 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
357 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
358 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
359 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
361 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
362 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
363 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
364 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
365 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
366 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
367 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
368 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
370 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
371 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
372 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
375 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
379 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
380 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
382 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
383 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
384 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
386 ** Improved robustness
388 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
389 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
390 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
393 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
397 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
398 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
399 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
400 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
401 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
403 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
407 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
410 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
414 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
415 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
416 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
417 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
419 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
420 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
422 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
423 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
424 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
427 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
429 ** Improved robustness
431 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
432 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
434 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
435 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
436 or NFS-mounted partition.
438 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
439 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
443 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
444 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
445 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
446 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
447 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
448 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
450 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
451 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
453 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
454 or neglect to report file removal.
456 For the "groups" command:
458 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
459 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
461 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
463 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
465 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
469 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
470 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
473 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
475 ** Changes in behavior
477 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
478 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
479 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
480 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
482 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
483 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
484 a final `./' or `../' component.
486 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
487 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
490 ** Infrastructure changes
492 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
493 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
494 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
495 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
499 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
502 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
503 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
504 dirent.d_type support.
506 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
507 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
509 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
510 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
511 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
512 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
515 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
517 ** Changes in behavior
519 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
523 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
524 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
528 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
529 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
530 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
532 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
533 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
535 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
536 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
538 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
540 ** Improved robustness
542 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
543 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
544 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
546 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
547 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
550 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
551 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
553 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
554 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
556 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
557 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
559 ** Changes in behavior
561 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
562 where the two are distinct.
564 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
565 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
566 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
567 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
568 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
569 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
570 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
571 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
572 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
573 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
574 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
575 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
576 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
577 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
578 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
579 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
580 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
582 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
583 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
584 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
586 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
587 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
588 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
589 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
592 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
593 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
597 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
598 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
599 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
600 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
602 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
603 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
604 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
606 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
607 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
608 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
609 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
610 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
613 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
614 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
616 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
617 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
618 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
619 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
621 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
622 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
623 successful and the output is easier to parse.
625 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
626 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
627 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
628 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
630 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
631 and sticky) with the -m option.
633 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
634 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
635 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
636 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
637 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
639 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
640 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
642 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
646 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
647 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
648 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
649 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
651 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
653 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
655 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
656 silently ignoring one of them.
658 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
659 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
660 containing this change was 5.92.
662 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
663 automatically newline terminated.
665 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
666 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
667 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
668 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
671 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
672 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
673 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
676 ** Scheduled for removal
678 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
679 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
681 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
682 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
683 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
684 command to unlink a directory.
686 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
687 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
688 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
689 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
693 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
694 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
695 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
696 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
697 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
698 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
702 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
703 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
705 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
707 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
708 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
709 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
711 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
712 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
715 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
716 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
718 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
719 list directories before files.
721 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
722 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
723 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
724 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
727 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
729 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
731 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
732 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
733 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
735 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
736 list of NUL-terminated file names.
740 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
741 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
742 usually printing nothing.
744 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
746 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
747 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
748 them with hard-linked directories.
750 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
751 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
752 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
754 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
755 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
756 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
758 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
761 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
762 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
764 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
765 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
767 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
768 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
770 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
771 all command-line arguments.
773 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
775 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
777 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
778 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
780 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
782 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
783 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
784 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
785 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
786 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
788 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
789 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
791 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
792 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
793 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
794 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
796 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
798 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
802 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
803 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
805 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
806 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
808 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
809 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
811 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
812 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
814 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
815 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
817 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
819 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
820 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
821 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
824 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
826 ** Build-related bug fixes
828 installing .mo files would fail
831 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
835 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
837 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
840 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
844 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
845 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
849 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
851 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
852 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
854 ** Deprecated options
856 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
857 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
859 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
863 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
865 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
866 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
867 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
868 conforming to older POSIX versions.
870 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
873 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
879 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
884 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
886 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
888 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
889 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
890 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
892 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
893 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
894 problematic usages. These include:
896 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
897 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
898 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
899 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
900 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
901 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
902 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
903 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
904 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
906 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
907 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
909 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
910 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
911 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
912 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
914 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
915 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
916 between binary and text files.
918 The following programs now always use text input/output:
922 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
926 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
927 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
930 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
932 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
933 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
935 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
936 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
937 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
939 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
941 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
943 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
944 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
945 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
949 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
951 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
952 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
954 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
955 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
956 blocks until F contains N blocks.
960 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
961 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
965 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
966 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
967 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
971 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
972 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
976 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
978 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
980 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
984 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
985 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
986 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
988 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
989 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
990 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
991 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
992 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
994 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
998 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
999 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1000 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1002 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1004 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1005 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1006 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1007 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1009 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1011 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1012 rather than silently wrapping around.
1014 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1015 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1017 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1018 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1020 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1021 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1022 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1023 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1025 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1027 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1029 ** Improved robustness
1031 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1032 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1033 no matter how large the result.
1035 ** Improved portability
1037 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1038 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1040 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1042 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1043 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1044 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1046 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1047 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1051 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1052 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1054 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1056 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1057 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1058 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1059 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1061 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1062 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1064 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1065 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1066 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1068 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1070 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1071 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1073 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1074 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1076 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1078 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1079 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1081 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1082 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1084 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1085 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1086 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1088 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1090 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1092 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1096 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1098 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1099 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1100 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1102 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1103 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1105 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1106 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1107 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1109 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1110 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1112 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1113 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1114 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1115 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1117 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1118 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1120 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1121 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1122 the file system does not support it.
1124 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1126 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1127 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1129 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1131 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1132 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1134 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1135 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1136 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1137 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1139 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1140 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1143 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1144 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1145 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1146 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1148 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1149 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1150 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1151 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1153 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1154 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1156 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1158 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1159 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1160 reporting incorrect results.
1164 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1165 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1167 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1170 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1172 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1173 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1175 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1176 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1178 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1181 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1182 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1183 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1184 the file name does not look like a page range.
1186 printf has several changes:
1188 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1189 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1191 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1192 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1193 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1195 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1196 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1199 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1200 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1202 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1203 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1205 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1207 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1208 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1210 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1212 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1214 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1215 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1216 when first encountering the directory.
1220 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1221 output; POSIX requires this.
1223 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1224 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1226 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1228 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1229 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1231 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1232 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1234 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1235 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1236 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1237 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1238 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1239 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1240 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1242 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1243 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1244 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1246 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1247 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1249 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1251 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1253 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1254 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1255 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1256 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1258 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1262 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1263 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1264 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1265 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1266 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1268 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1269 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1270 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1272 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1273 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1275 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1276 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1278 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1279 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1280 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1281 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1282 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1284 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1285 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1287 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1288 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1290 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1292 nocreat do not create the output file
1293 excl fail if the output file already exists
1294 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1295 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1297 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1299 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1300 direct use direct I/O for data
1301 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1302 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1303 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1304 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1305 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1307 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1309 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1310 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1313 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1314 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1315 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1316 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1317 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1318 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1320 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1321 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1323 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1326 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1328 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1330 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1331 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1333 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1334 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1335 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1337 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1338 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1339 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1341 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1343 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1344 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1346 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1347 for compatibility with bash.
1349 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1351 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1352 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1353 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1354 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1356 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1357 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1359 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1360 ls supports TABSIZE.
1361 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1362 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1363 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1365 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1368 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1370 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1371 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1372 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1373 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1374 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1375 an offset, not as a file name.
1377 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1378 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1380 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1381 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1383 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1384 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1386 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1387 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1388 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1390 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1391 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1393 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1394 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1398 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1400 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1402 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1406 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1407 or more arguments between partitions.
1409 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1410 holes in the destination.
1412 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1413 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1414 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1415 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1416 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1417 terminates immediately.
1419 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1421 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1423 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1424 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1425 not the empty string.
1427 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1428 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1432 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1433 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1434 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1437 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1444 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1448 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1449 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1451 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1452 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1454 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1455 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1456 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1459 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1463 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1464 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1466 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1467 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1469 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1470 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1471 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1473 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1475 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1478 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1480 ** Configuration option
1482 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1483 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1487 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1488 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1492 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1493 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1494 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1497 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1498 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1499 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1500 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1501 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1502 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1503 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1506 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1510 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1511 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1512 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1514 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1515 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1517 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1519 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1520 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1521 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1522 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1524 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1526 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1527 not just the ones that reference directories
1529 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1530 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1532 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1533 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1534 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1536 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1537 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1538 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1539 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1540 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1541 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1543 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1548 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1549 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1551 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1553 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1555 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1557 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1558 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1560 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1561 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1563 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1565 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1569 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1571 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1573 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1574 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1575 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1576 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1577 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1579 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1580 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1582 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1583 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1585 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1586 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1588 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1589 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1590 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1594 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1595 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1596 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1597 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1598 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1599 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1600 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1601 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1602 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1603 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1604 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1605 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1606 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1607 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1609 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1611 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1612 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1614 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1616 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1618 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1619 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1621 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1623 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1624 without a trailing newline.
1626 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1627 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1629 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1632 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1636 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1638 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1640 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1641 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1642 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1643 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1645 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1647 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1648 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1649 be printed without leading spaces.
1651 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1652 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1657 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1658 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1659 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1661 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1663 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1664 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1666 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1667 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1669 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1670 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1672 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1674 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1676 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1678 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1679 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1681 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1683 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1685 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1686 byte offsets are specified.
1689 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1692 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1695 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1696 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1697 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1698 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1699 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1700 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1701 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1702 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1703 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1704 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1705 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1706 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1707 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1708 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1709 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1710 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1711 directory where M has write access.
1712 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1713 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1714 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1717 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1718 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1719 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1720 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1721 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1722 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1723 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1724 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1725 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1726 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1727 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1728 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1729 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1730 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1731 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1732 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1733 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1734 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1735 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1736 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1737 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1738 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1739 appeared one additional time.
1741 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1742 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1743 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1744 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1747 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1748 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1749 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1750 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1751 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1752 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1753 if there were more than 338.
1755 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1756 - false --help now exits nonzero
1759 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1760 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1761 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1762 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1765 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1766 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1767 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1768 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1769 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1772 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1773 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1774 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1775 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1776 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1777 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1778 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1781 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1782 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1783 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1784 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1785 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1786 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1788 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1789 under certain unusual conditions
1790 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1791 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1794 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1795 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1796 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1797 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1798 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1799 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1800 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1801 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1802 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1803 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1804 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1805 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1806 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1807 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1808 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1809 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1812 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1813 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1816 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1817 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1818 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1819 involving hard-linked directories
1820 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1821 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1822 character-special and block files
1825 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1826 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1827 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1828 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1829 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1830 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1831 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1832 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1833 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1835 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1836 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1837 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1838 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1839 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1840 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1841 specified on the command line.
1842 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1843 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1844 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1845 the first file untouched.
1846 * readlink: new program
1847 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1848 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1849 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1850 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1851 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1852 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1855 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1856 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1857 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1858 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1859 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1860 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1861 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1862 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1863 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1864 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1865 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1866 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1868 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1869 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1870 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1872 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1873 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1874 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1875 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1876 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1877 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1878 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1879 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1882 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1883 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1886 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1887 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1888 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1889 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1890 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1891 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1892 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1895 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1896 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1898 ========================================================================
1899 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1900 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1903 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1905 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1906 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1907 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1908 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1909 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1910 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1911 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1912 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1913 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1914 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1915 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1916 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1918 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1919 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1920 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1921 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1923 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1926 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1928 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1929 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1930 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1931 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1932 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1933 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1934 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1937 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1938 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1939 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1940 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1941 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1942 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1943 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1944 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1945 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1946 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1947 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1948 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1949 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1950 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1951 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1952 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1954 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1955 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1957 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1958 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1959 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1960 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1961 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1962 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1964 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1965 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1966 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1967 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1968 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1969 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1970 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1972 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1973 the source files in the following example:
1974 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1975 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1976 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1977 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1978 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1979 links between source files with --preserve=links
1980 * cp accepts new options:
1981 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1982 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1983 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1984 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1985 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1986 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1987 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1988 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1989 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1991 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1992 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1993 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1994 even though it's older than dest.
1995 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1996 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1997 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1998 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1999 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2001 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2002 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2003 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2004 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2005 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2006 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2007 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2009 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2010 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2011 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2013 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2014 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2015 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2016 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2017 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2018 This is the default.
2020 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2021 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2022 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2023 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2024 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2026 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2029 ========================================================================
2030 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2031 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2034 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2035 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2037 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2038 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2039 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2040 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2041 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2043 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2044 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2045 that specifies a non-directory
2048 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2049 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2050 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2051 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2052 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2053 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2054 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2055 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2056 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2057 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2058 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2059 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2060 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2061 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2062 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2063 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2064 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2065 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2066 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2067 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2068 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2069 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2070 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2071 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2073 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2074 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2075 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2077 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2079 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2080 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2082 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2083 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2084 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2085 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2086 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2088 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2089 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2090 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2091 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2092 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2094 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2096 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2097 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2098 * still more portability fixes
2099 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2100 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2102 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2104 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2106 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2108 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2109 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2110 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2111 there is any time remaining
2112 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2114 ========================================================================
2115 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2116 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2118 This package began as the union of the following:
2119 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2121 ========================================================================
2123 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2126 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2127 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2128 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2129 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2130 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2131 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.