1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
7 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
10 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
14 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
16 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
17 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
18 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
20 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
21 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
24 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
28 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
29 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
31 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
32 support but with insufficient /proc support.
34 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
35 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
37 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
38 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
39 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
40 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
41 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
42 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
44 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
45 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
48 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
49 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
51 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
54 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
55 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
56 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
58 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
59 directory is unreadable.
61 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
62 Before it would print nothing.
64 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
68 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
69 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
70 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
72 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
73 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
74 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
75 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
78 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
82 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
83 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
84 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
85 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
86 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
87 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
88 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
90 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
91 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
92 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
93 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
94 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
95 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
96 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
97 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
99 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
100 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
101 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
104 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
108 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
109 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
111 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
112 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
113 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
115 ** Improved robustness
117 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
118 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
119 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
122 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
126 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
127 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
128 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
129 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
130 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
132 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
136 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
139 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
143 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
144 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
145 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
146 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
148 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
149 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
151 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
152 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
153 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
156 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
158 ** Improved robustness
160 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
161 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
163 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
164 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
165 or NFS-mounted partition.
167 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
168 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
172 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
173 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
174 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
175 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
176 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
177 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
179 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
180 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
182 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
183 or neglect to report file removal.
185 For the "groups" command:
187 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
188 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
190 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
192 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
194 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
198 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
199 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
202 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
204 ** Changes in behavior
206 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
207 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
208 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
209 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
211 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
212 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
213 a final `./' or `../' component.
215 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
216 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
219 ** Infrastructure changes
221 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
222 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
223 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
224 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
228 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
231 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
232 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
233 dirent.d_type support.
235 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
236 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
238 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
239 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
240 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
241 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
244 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
246 ** Changes in behavior
248 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
252 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
253 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
257 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
258 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
259 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
261 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
262 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
264 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
265 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
267 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
269 ** Improved robustness
271 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
272 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
273 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
275 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
276 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
279 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
280 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
282 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
283 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
285 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
286 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
288 ** Changes in behavior
290 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
291 where the two are distinct.
293 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
294 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
295 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
296 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
297 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
298 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
299 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
300 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
301 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
302 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
303 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
304 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
305 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
306 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
307 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
308 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
309 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
311 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
312 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
313 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
315 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
316 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
317 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
318 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
321 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
322 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
326 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
327 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
328 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
329 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
331 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
332 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
333 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
335 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
336 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
337 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
338 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
339 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
342 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
343 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
345 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
346 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
347 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
348 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
350 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
351 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
352 successful and the output is easier to parse.
354 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
355 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
356 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
357 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
359 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
360 and sticky) with the -m option.
362 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
363 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
364 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
365 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
366 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
368 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
369 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
371 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
375 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
376 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
377 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
378 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
380 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
382 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
384 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
385 silently ignoring one of them.
387 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
388 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
389 containing this change was 5.92.
391 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
392 automatically newline terminated.
394 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
395 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
396 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
397 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
400 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
401 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
402 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
405 ** Scheduled for removal
407 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
408 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
410 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
411 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
412 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
413 command to unlink a directory.
415 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
416 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
417 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
418 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
422 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
423 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
424 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
425 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
426 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
427 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
431 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
432 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
434 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
436 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
437 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
438 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
440 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
441 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
444 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
445 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
447 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
448 list directories before files.
450 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
451 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
452 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
453 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
456 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
458 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
460 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
461 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
462 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
464 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
465 list of NUL-terminated file names.
469 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
470 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
471 usually printing nothing.
473 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
475 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
476 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
477 them with hard-linked directories.
479 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
480 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
481 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
483 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
484 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
485 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
487 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
490 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
491 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
493 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
494 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
496 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
497 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
499 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
500 all command-line arguments.
502 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
504 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
506 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
507 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
509 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
511 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
512 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
513 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
514 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
515 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
517 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
518 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
520 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
521 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
522 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
523 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
525 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
527 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
531 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
532 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
534 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
535 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
537 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
538 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
540 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
541 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
543 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
544 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
546 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
548 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
549 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
550 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
553 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
555 ** Build-related bug fixes
557 installing .mo files would fail
560 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
564 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
566 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
569 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
573 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
574 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
578 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
580 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
581 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
583 ** Deprecated options
585 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
586 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
588 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
592 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
594 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
595 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
596 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
597 conforming to older POSIX versions.
599 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
602 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
608 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
613 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
615 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
617 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
618 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
619 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
621 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
622 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
623 problematic usages. These include:
625 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
626 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
627 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
628 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
629 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
630 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
631 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
632 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
633 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
635 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
636 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
638 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
639 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
640 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
641 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
643 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
644 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
645 between binary and text files.
647 The following programs now always use text input/output:
651 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
655 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
656 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
659 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
661 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
662 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
664 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
665 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
666 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
668 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
670 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
672 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
673 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
674 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
678 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
680 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
681 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
683 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
684 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
685 blocks until F contains N blocks.
689 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
690 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
694 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
695 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
696 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
700 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
701 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
705 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
707 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
709 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
713 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
714 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
715 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
717 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
718 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
719 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
720 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
721 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
723 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
727 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
728 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
729 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
731 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
733 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
734 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
735 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
736 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
738 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
740 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
741 rather than silently wrapping around.
743 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
744 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
746 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
747 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
749 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
750 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
751 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
754 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
756 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
758 ** Improved robustness
760 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
761 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
762 no matter how large the result.
764 ** Improved portability
766 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
767 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
769 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
771 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
772 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
773 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
775 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
776 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
780 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
781 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
783 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
785 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
786 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
787 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
788 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
790 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
791 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
793 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
794 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
795 categories if not specified by dircolors.
797 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
799 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
800 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
802 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
803 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
805 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
807 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
808 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
810 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
811 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
813 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
814 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
815 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
817 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
819 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
821 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
825 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
827 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
828 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
829 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
831 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
832 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
834 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
835 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
836 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
838 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
839 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
841 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
842 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
843 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
844 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
846 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
847 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
849 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
850 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
851 the file system does not support it.
853 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
855 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
856 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
858 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
860 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
861 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
863 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
864 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
865 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
866 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
868 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
869 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
872 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
873 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
874 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
875 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
877 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
878 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
879 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
880 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
882 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
883 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
885 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
887 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
888 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
889 reporting incorrect results.
893 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
894 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
896 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
899 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
901 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
902 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
904 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
905 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
907 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
910 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
911 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
912 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
913 the file name does not look like a page range.
915 printf has several changes:
917 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
918 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
920 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
921 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
922 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
924 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
925 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
928 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
929 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
931 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
932 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
934 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
936 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
937 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
939 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
941 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
943 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
944 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
945 when first encountering the directory.
949 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
950 output; POSIX requires this.
952 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
953 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
955 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
957 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
958 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
960 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
961 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
963 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
964 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
965 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
966 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
967 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
968 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
969 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
971 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
972 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
973 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
975 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
976 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
978 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
980 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
982 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
983 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
984 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
985 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
987 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
991 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
992 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
993 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
994 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
995 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
997 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
998 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
999 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1001 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1002 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1004 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1005 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1007 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1008 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1009 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1010 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1011 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1013 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1014 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1016 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1017 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1019 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1021 nocreat do not create the output file
1022 excl fail if the output file already exists
1023 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1024 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1026 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1028 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1029 direct use direct I/O for data
1030 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1031 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1032 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1033 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1034 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1036 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1038 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1039 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1042 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1043 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1044 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1045 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1046 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1047 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1049 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1050 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1052 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1055 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1057 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1059 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1060 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1062 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1063 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1064 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1066 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1067 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1068 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1070 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1072 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1073 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1075 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1076 for compatibility with bash.
1078 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1080 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1081 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1082 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1083 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1085 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1086 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1088 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1089 ls supports TABSIZE.
1090 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1091 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1092 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1094 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1097 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1099 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1100 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1101 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1102 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1103 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1104 an offset, not as a file name.
1106 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1107 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1109 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1110 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1112 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1113 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1115 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1116 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1117 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1119 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1120 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1122 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1123 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1127 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1129 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1131 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1135 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1136 or more arguments between partitions.
1138 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1139 holes in the destination.
1141 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1142 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1143 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1144 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1145 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1146 terminates immediately.
1148 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1150 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1152 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1153 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1154 not the empty string.
1156 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1157 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1161 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1162 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1163 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1166 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1173 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1177 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1178 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1180 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1181 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1183 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1184 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1185 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1188 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1192 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1193 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1195 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1196 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1198 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1199 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1200 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1202 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1204 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1207 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1209 ** Configuration option
1211 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1212 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1216 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1217 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1221 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1222 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1223 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1226 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1227 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1228 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1229 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1230 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1231 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1232 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1235 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1239 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1240 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1241 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1243 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1244 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1246 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1248 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1249 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1250 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1251 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1253 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1255 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1256 not just the ones that reference directories
1258 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1259 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1261 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1262 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1263 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1265 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1266 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1267 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1268 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1269 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1270 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1272 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1277 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1278 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1280 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1282 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1284 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1286 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1287 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1289 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1290 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1292 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1294 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1298 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1300 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1302 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1303 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1304 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1305 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1306 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1308 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1309 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1311 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1312 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1314 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1315 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1317 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1318 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1319 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1323 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1324 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1325 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1326 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1327 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1328 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1329 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1330 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1331 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1332 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1333 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1334 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1335 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1336 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1338 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1340 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1341 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1343 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1345 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1347 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1348 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1350 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1352 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1353 without a trailing newline.
1355 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1356 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1358 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1361 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1365 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1367 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1369 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1370 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1371 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1372 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1374 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1376 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1377 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1378 be printed without leading spaces.
1380 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1381 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1386 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1387 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1388 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1390 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1392 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1393 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1395 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1396 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1398 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1399 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1401 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1403 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1405 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1407 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1408 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1410 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1412 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1414 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1415 byte offsets are specified.
1418 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1421 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1424 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1425 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1426 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1427 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1428 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1429 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1430 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1431 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1432 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1433 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1434 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1435 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1436 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1437 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1438 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1439 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1440 directory where M has write access.
1441 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1442 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1443 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1446 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1447 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1448 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1449 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1450 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1451 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1452 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1453 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1454 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1455 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1456 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1457 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1458 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1459 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1460 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1461 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1462 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1463 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1464 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1465 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1466 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1467 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1468 appeared one additional time.
1470 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1471 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1472 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1473 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1476 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1477 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1478 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1479 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1480 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1481 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1482 if there were more than 338.
1484 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1485 - false --help now exits nonzero
1488 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1489 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1490 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1491 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1494 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1495 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1496 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1497 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1498 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1501 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1502 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1503 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1504 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1505 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1506 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1507 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1510 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1511 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1512 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1513 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1514 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1515 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1517 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1518 under certain unusual conditions
1519 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1520 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1523 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1524 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1525 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1526 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1527 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1528 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1529 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1530 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1531 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1532 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1533 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1534 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1535 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1536 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1537 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1538 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1541 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1542 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1545 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1546 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1547 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1548 involving hard-linked directories
1549 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1550 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1551 character-special and block files
1554 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1555 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1556 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1557 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1558 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1559 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1560 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1561 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1562 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1564 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1565 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1566 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1567 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1568 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1569 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1570 specified on the command line.
1571 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1572 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1573 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1574 the first file untouched.
1575 * readlink: new program
1576 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1577 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1578 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1579 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1580 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1581 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1584 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1585 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1586 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1587 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1588 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1589 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1590 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1591 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1592 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1593 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1594 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1595 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1597 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1598 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1599 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1601 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1602 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1603 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1604 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1605 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1606 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1607 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1608 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1611 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1612 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1615 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1616 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1617 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1618 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1619 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1620 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1621 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1624 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1625 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1627 ========================================================================
1628 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1629 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1632 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1634 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1635 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1636 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1637 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1638 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1639 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1640 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1641 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1642 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1643 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1644 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1645 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1647 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1648 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1649 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1650 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1652 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1655 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1657 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1658 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1659 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1660 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1661 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1662 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1663 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1666 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1667 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1668 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1669 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1670 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1671 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1672 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1673 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1674 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1675 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1676 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1677 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1678 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1679 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1680 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1681 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1683 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1684 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1686 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1687 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1688 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1689 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1690 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1691 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1693 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1694 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1695 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1696 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1697 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1698 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1699 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1701 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1702 the source files in the following example:
1703 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1704 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1705 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1706 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1707 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1708 links between source files with --preserve=links
1709 * cp accepts new options:
1710 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1711 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1712 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1713 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1714 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1715 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1716 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1717 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1718 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1720 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1721 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1722 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1723 even though it's older than dest.
1724 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1725 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1726 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1727 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1728 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1730 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1731 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1732 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1733 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1734 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1735 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1736 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1738 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1739 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1740 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1742 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1743 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1744 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1745 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1746 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1747 This is the default.
1749 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1750 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1751 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1752 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1753 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1755 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1758 ========================================================================
1759 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1760 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1763 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1764 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1766 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1767 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1768 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1769 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1770 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1772 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1773 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1774 that specifies a non-directory
1777 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1778 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1779 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1780 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1781 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1782 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1783 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1784 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1785 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1786 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1787 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1788 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1789 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1790 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1791 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1792 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1793 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1794 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1795 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1796 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1797 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1798 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1799 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1800 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1802 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1803 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1804 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1806 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1808 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1809 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1811 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1812 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1813 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1814 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1815 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1817 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1818 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1819 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1820 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1821 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1823 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1825 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1826 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1827 * still more portability fixes
1828 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1829 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1831 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1833 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1835 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1837 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1838 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1839 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1840 there is any time remaining
1841 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1843 ========================================================================
1844 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1845 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1847 This package began as the union of the following:
1848 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1850 ========================================================================
1852 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1855 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1856 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1857 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1858 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1859 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1860 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.