1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
8 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
10 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
11 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
13 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
14 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
16 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
17 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
18 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
19 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
21 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
22 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
26 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
29 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
33 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
34 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
35 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
36 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
38 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
39 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
40 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
42 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
43 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
45 ** Changes in behavior
47 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
48 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
50 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
51 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
52 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
53 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
54 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
55 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
57 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
58 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
59 the same way as the others.
62 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
66 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
67 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
68 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
70 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
71 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
73 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
74 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
75 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
77 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
78 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
80 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
81 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
83 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
84 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
85 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
87 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
88 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
89 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
90 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
94 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
95 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
97 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
100 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
101 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
103 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
105 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
106 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
107 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
109 ** Changes in behavior
111 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
112 rather than its aliased target.
114 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
115 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
116 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
118 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
119 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
120 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
121 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
122 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
123 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
124 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
125 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
127 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
129 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
131 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
132 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
135 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
136 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
137 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
138 control like taskset for example.
140 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
142 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
143 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
144 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
145 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
146 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
147 includes %C when context information is available.
149 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
150 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
151 rather than a file system attribute.
153 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
154 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
155 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
156 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
158 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
159 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
160 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
162 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
163 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
164 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
167 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
171 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
172 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
174 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
176 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
177 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
179 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
180 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
181 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
182 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
184 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
185 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
186 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
190 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
191 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
193 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
194 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
195 duration after the initial signal was sent.
197 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
198 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
199 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
200 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
201 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
202 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
203 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
204 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
205 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
207 ** Changes in behavior
209 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
210 sequence when it would be a no-op.
212 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
213 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
216 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
220 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
221 of available processors, which may not have been the case
222 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
223 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
227 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
228 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
230 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
231 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
232 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
233 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
235 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
236 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
237 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
240 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
244 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
245 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
246 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
248 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
249 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
250 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
252 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
253 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
255 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
256 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
257 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
258 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
260 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
261 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
262 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
264 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
265 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
266 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
267 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
269 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
270 renamed-aside and then recreated.
271 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
273 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
274 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
275 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
276 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
278 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
279 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
280 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
282 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
283 processes will not intersperse their output.
284 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
287 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
291 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
292 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
294 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
295 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
297 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
298 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
299 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
300 the presence of the empty string argument.
301 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
303 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
304 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
305 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
306 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
308 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
309 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
311 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
312 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
313 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
315 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
316 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
317 and with a malicious user on the same system
318 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
319 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
322 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
326 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
327 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
328 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
330 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
331 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
332 offending directory and all "contents."
334 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
335 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
336 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
338 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
339 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
340 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
342 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
343 processes will not intersperse their output.
344 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
345 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
347 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
348 output the name of the file to stdout.
349 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
351 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
352 call fails with errno == EACCES.
353 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
355 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
356 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
359 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
360 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
361 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
363 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
364 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
365 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
366 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
367 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
368 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
370 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
371 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
372 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
373 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
375 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
376 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
378 ** Changes in behavior
380 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
381 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
382 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
383 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
384 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
386 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
387 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
388 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
389 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
391 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
393 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
394 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
395 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
396 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
397 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
401 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
405 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
406 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
408 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
409 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
411 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
412 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
413 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
415 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
416 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
419 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
423 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
424 when the source file doesn't have write access.
425 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
427 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
428 to accommodate leap seconds.
429 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
431 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
432 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
433 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
435 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
437 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
438 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
439 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
441 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
442 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
443 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
444 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
445 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
449 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
450 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
451 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
452 directory or a symlink to a directory.
454 ** Changes in behavior
456 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
457 environment variable is set.
459 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
460 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
461 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
465 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
466 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
467 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
468 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
470 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
471 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
472 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
473 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
477 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
478 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
479 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
481 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
482 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
483 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
484 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
485 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
486 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
489 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
490 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
493 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
497 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
498 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
499 and libraries tested at configure time.
500 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
502 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
503 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
505 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
506 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
508 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
509 printing a summary to stderr.
510 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
512 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
513 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
514 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
516 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
517 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
519 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
520 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
521 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
522 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
524 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
525 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
526 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
527 which is relatively unusual.
528 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
530 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
531 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
532 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
533 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
534 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
535 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
536 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
540 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
541 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
542 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
543 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
544 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
548 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
549 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
551 ** Changes in behavior
553 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
554 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
555 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
556 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
557 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
560 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
564 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
565 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
567 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
568 before data copying has started.
570 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
571 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
573 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
574 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
575 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
576 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
578 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
579 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
580 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
581 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
583 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
588 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
589 for its standard streams.
591 ** Changes in behavior
593 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
594 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
595 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
596 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
597 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
598 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
600 ** Deprecated options
602 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
603 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
607 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
609 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
610 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
613 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
615 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
616 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
618 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
619 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
622 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
626 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
627 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
628 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
629 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
631 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
632 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
633 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
634 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
635 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
640 make check: two tests have been corrected
644 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
645 inherited from gnulib.
648 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
652 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
653 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
654 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
655 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
657 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
658 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
660 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
662 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
663 systems without xattr support.
665 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
666 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
667 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
669 ** Changes in behavior
671 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
672 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
673 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
674 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
676 ** Improved robustness
678 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
679 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
680 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
681 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
682 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
683 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
684 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
685 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
686 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
690 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
691 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
693 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
694 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
695 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
696 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
697 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
700 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
704 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
705 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
706 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
710 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
711 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
712 data was read, or on process exit.
713 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
715 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
716 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
717 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
718 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
720 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
721 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
722 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
723 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
725 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
726 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
728 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
729 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
731 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
732 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
733 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
735 ** Changes in behavior
737 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
738 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
739 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
741 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
742 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
744 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
745 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
746 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
749 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
753 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
755 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
756 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
757 install: Never copies xattrs
759 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
760 from overwriting any existing destination file
762 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
763 mode where this feature is available.
765 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
766 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
767 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
768 do not modify the destination at all.
770 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
772 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
776 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
777 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
779 cp uses much less memory in some situations
781 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
782 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
784 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
785 processing the first file name
787 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
788 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
789 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
790 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
792 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
793 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
795 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
796 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
799 ** Changes in behavior
801 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
802 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
804 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
805 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
806 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
808 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
809 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
811 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
813 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
814 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
815 is still marked with a '+'.
818 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
822 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
823 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
827 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
828 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
829 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
830 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
831 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
832 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
834 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
835 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
837 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
838 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
840 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
842 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
843 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
844 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
846 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
847 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
849 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
850 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
851 used to factor large numbers.
853 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
856 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
858 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
860 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
861 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
863 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
864 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
865 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
866 maximum command-line (argv) length.
868 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
869 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
870 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
872 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
873 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
877 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
879 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
880 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
882 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
883 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
885 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
887 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
888 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
892 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
893 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
894 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
896 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
898 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
899 no matter how many files are in a given directory
901 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
902 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
903 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
905 ** Changes in behavior
907 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
908 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
911 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
915 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
917 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
918 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
919 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
921 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
922 with no USERNAME argument.
924 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
925 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
926 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
928 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
929 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
930 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
931 number of fields for some inputs.
933 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
934 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
936 ** Changes in behavior
938 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
939 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
942 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
946 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
948 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
949 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
950 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
951 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
953 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
954 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
956 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
957 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
959 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
960 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
962 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
963 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
964 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
965 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
967 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
968 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
969 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
970 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
971 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
972 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
974 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
975 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
977 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
978 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
979 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
981 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
982 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
984 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
985 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
987 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
988 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
989 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
990 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
992 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
993 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
995 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
996 in more cases when a directory is empty.
998 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
999 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1000 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1004 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1005 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1007 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1008 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1009 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1010 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1014 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1015 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1017 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1019 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1023 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1024 which have negative errno values.
1028 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1032 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1036 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1037 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1040 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1044 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1045 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1046 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1048 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1049 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1050 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1051 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1055 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1056 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1057 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1058 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1061 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1065 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1067 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1068 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1069 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1072 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1076 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1077 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1079 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1081 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1083 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1085 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1089 ** Changes in behavior
1091 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1092 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1094 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1095 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1097 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1098 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1099 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1103 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1104 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1105 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1106 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1107 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1108 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1109 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1110 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1111 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1112 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1113 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1115 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1116 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1117 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1120 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1123 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1124 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1125 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1127 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1128 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1129 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1132 ** New build options
1134 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1135 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1136 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1137 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1139 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1140 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1141 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1142 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1143 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1144 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1145 of "make check" fail.
1147 ** Remove deprecated options
1149 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1150 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1151 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1152 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1153 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1155 ** Improved robustness
1157 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1158 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1159 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1160 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1161 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1162 loss of the contents of a/f.
1164 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1165 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1169 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1170 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1171 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1173 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1174 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1175 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1176 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1178 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1179 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1180 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1181 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1182 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1183 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1184 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1185 destination is a symlink.
1187 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1189 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1190 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1192 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1193 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1195 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1197 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1198 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1200 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1201 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1203 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1206 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1207 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1209 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1210 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1212 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1213 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1214 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1215 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1217 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1218 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1219 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1221 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1222 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1223 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1225 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1226 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1227 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1228 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1230 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1231 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1232 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1234 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1235 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1237 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1238 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1240 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1242 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1243 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1244 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1246 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1247 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1249 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1250 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1252 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1253 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1255 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1256 [present in the original version]
1259 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1263 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1265 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1266 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1267 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1269 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1270 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1272 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1276 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1277 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1279 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1280 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1282 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1283 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1285 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1286 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1287 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1288 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1289 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1290 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1292 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1293 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1296 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1297 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1299 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1302 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1303 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1304 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1306 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1307 directory is unreadable.
1309 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1310 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1311 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1313 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1314 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1315 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1316 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1317 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1320 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1321 Before it would print nothing.
1323 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1325 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1326 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1327 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1328 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1329 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1330 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1331 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1332 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1334 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1338 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1339 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1340 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1342 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1343 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1344 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1345 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1348 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1352 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1353 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1354 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1355 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1356 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1357 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1358 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1360 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1361 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1362 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1363 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1364 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1365 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1366 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1367 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1369 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1370 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1371 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1374 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1378 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1379 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1381 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1382 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1383 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1385 ** Improved robustness
1387 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1388 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1389 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1392 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1396 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1397 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1398 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1399 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1400 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1402 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1406 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1409 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1413 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1414 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1415 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1416 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1418 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1419 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1421 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1422 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1423 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1426 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1428 ** Improved robustness
1430 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1431 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1433 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1434 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1435 or NFS-mounted partition.
1437 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1438 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1442 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1443 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1444 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1445 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1446 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1447 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1449 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1450 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1452 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1453 or neglect to report file removal.
1455 For the "groups" command:
1457 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1458 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1460 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1462 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1464 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1468 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1469 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1472 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1474 ** Changes in behavior
1476 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1477 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1478 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1479 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1481 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1482 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1483 a final `./' or `../' component.
1485 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1486 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1487 this only for pipes.
1489 ** Infrastructure changes
1491 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1492 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1493 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1494 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1498 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1499 name is "." or "..".
1501 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1502 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1503 dirent.d_type support.
1505 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1506 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1508 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1509 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1510 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1511 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1514 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1516 ** Changes in behavior
1518 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1522 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1523 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1527 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1528 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1529 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1531 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1532 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1534 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1535 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1537 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1539 ** Improved robustness
1541 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1542 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1543 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1545 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1546 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1549 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1550 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1552 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1553 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1555 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1556 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1558 ** Changes in behavior
1560 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1561 where the two are distinct.
1563 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1564 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1565 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1566 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1567 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1568 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1569 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1570 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1571 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1572 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1573 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1574 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1575 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1576 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1577 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1578 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1579 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1581 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1582 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1583 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1585 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1586 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1587 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1588 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1591 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1592 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1596 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1597 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1598 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1599 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1601 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1602 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1603 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1605 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1606 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1607 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1608 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1609 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1612 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1613 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1615 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1616 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1617 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1618 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1620 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1621 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1622 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1624 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1625 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1626 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1627 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1629 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1630 and sticky) with the -m option.
1632 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1633 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1634 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1635 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1636 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1638 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1639 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1641 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1645 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1646 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1647 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1648 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1650 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1652 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1654 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1655 silently ignoring one of them.
1657 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1658 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1659 containing this change was 5.92.
1661 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1662 automatically newline terminated.
1664 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1665 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1666 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1667 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1670 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1671 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1672 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1675 ** Scheduled for removal
1677 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1678 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1680 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1681 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1682 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1683 command to unlink a directory.
1685 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1686 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1687 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1688 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1692 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1693 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1694 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1695 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1696 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1697 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1701 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1702 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1704 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1706 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1707 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1708 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1710 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1711 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1714 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1715 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1717 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1718 list directories before files.
1720 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1721 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1722 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1723 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1726 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1728 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1730 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1731 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1732 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1734 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1735 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1739 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1740 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1741 usually printing nothing.
1743 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1745 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1746 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1747 them with hard-linked directories.
1749 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1750 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1751 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1753 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1754 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1755 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1757 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1760 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1761 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1763 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1764 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1766 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1767 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1769 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1770 all command-line arguments.
1772 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1774 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1776 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1777 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1779 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1781 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1782 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1783 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1784 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1785 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1787 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1788 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1790 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1791 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1792 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1793 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1795 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1797 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1801 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1802 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1804 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1805 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1807 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1808 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1810 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1811 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1813 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1814 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1816 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1818 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1819 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1820 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1823 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1825 ** Build-related bug fixes
1827 installing .mo files would fail
1830 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1834 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1836 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1839 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1843 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1844 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1848 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1850 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1851 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1853 ** Deprecated options
1855 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1856 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1858 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1862 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1864 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1865 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1866 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1867 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1869 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1872 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1878 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1883 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1885 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1887 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1888 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1889 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1891 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1892 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1893 problematic usages. These include:
1895 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1896 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1897 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1898 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1899 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1900 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1901 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1902 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1903 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1905 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1906 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1908 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1909 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1910 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1911 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1913 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1914 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1915 between binary and text files.
1917 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1921 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1925 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1926 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1928 head tac tail tee tr
1929 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1931 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1932 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1934 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1935 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1936 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1938 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1940 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1942 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1943 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1944 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1948 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1950 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1951 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1953 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1954 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1955 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1959 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1960 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1964 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1965 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1966 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1970 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1971 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1975 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1977 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1979 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1983 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1984 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1985 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1987 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1988 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1989 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1990 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1991 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1993 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1997 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1998 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1999 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2001 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2003 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2004 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2005 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2006 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2008 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2010 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2011 rather than silently wrapping around.
2013 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2014 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2016 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2017 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2019 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2020 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2021 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2022 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2024 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2026 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2028 ** Improved robustness
2030 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2031 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2032 no matter how large the result.
2034 ** Improved portability
2036 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2037 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2039 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2041 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2042 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2043 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2045 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2046 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2050 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2051 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2053 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2055 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2056 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2057 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2058 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2060 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2061 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2063 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2064 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2065 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2067 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2069 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2070 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2072 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2073 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2075 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2077 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2078 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2080 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2081 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2083 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2084 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2085 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2087 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2089 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2091 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2095 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2097 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2098 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2099 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2101 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2102 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2104 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2105 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2106 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2108 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2109 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2111 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2112 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2113 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2114 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2116 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2117 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2119 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2120 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2121 the file system does not support it.
2123 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2125 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2126 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2128 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2130 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2131 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2133 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2134 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2135 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2136 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2138 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2139 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2142 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2143 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2144 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2145 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2147 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2148 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2149 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2150 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2152 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2153 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2155 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2157 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2158 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2159 reporting incorrect results.
2163 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2164 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2166 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2169 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2171 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2172 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2174 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2175 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2177 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2180 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2181 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2182 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2183 the file name does not look like a page range.
2185 printf has several changes:
2187 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2188 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2190 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2191 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2192 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2194 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2195 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2198 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2199 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2201 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2202 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2204 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2206 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2207 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2209 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2211 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2213 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2214 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2215 when first encountering the directory.
2219 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2220 output; POSIX requires this.
2222 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2223 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2225 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2227 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2228 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2230 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2231 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2233 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2234 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2235 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2236 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2237 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2238 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2239 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2241 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2242 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2243 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2245 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2246 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2248 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2250 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2252 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2253 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2254 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2255 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2257 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2261 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2262 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2263 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2264 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2265 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2267 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2268 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2269 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2271 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2272 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2274 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2275 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2277 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2278 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2279 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2280 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2281 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2283 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2284 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2286 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2287 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2289 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2291 nocreat do not create the output file
2292 excl fail if the output file already exists
2293 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2294 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2296 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2298 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2299 direct use direct I/O for data
2300 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2301 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2302 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2303 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2304 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2306 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2308 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2309 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2312 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2313 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2314 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2315 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2316 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2317 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2319 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2320 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2322 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2325 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2327 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2329 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2330 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2332 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2333 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2334 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2336 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2337 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2338 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2340 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2342 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2343 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2345 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2346 for compatibility with bash.
2348 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2350 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2351 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2352 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2353 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2355 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2356 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2358 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2359 ls supports TABSIZE.
2360 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2361 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2362 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2364 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2367 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2369 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2370 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2371 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2372 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2373 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2374 an offset, not as a file name.
2376 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2377 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2379 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2380 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2382 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2383 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2385 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2386 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2387 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2389 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2390 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2392 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2393 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2397 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2399 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2401 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2405 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2406 or more arguments between partitions.
2408 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2409 holes in the destination.
2411 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2412 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2413 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2414 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2415 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2416 terminates immediately.
2418 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2420 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2422 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2423 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2424 not the empty string.
2426 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2427 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2431 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2432 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2433 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2436 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2443 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2447 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2448 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2450 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2451 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2453 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2454 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2455 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2458 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2462 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2463 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2465 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2466 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2468 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2469 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2470 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2472 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2474 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2477 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2479 ** Configuration option
2481 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2482 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2486 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2487 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2491 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2492 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2493 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2496 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2497 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2498 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2499 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2500 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2501 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2502 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2505 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2509 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2510 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2511 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2513 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2514 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2516 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2518 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2519 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2520 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2521 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2523 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2525 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2526 not just the ones that reference directories
2528 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2529 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2531 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2532 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2533 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2535 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2536 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2537 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2538 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2539 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2540 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2542 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2547 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2548 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2550 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2552 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2554 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2556 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2557 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2559 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2560 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2562 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2564 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2568 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2570 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2572 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2573 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2574 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2575 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2576 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2578 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2579 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2581 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2582 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2584 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2585 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2587 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2588 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2589 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2593 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2594 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2595 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2596 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2597 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2598 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2599 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2600 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2601 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2602 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2603 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2604 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2605 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2606 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2608 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2610 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2611 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2613 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2615 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2617 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2618 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2620 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2622 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2623 without a trailing newline.
2625 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2626 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2628 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2631 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2635 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2637 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2639 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2640 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2641 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2642 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2644 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2646 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2647 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2648 be printed without leading spaces.
2650 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2651 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2656 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2657 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2658 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2660 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2662 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2663 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2665 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2666 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2668 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2669 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2671 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2673 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2675 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2677 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2678 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2680 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2682 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2684 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2685 byte offsets are specified.
2688 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2691 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2694 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2695 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2696 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2697 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2698 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2699 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2700 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2701 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2702 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2703 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2704 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2705 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2706 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2707 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2708 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2709 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2710 directory where M has write access.
2711 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2712 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2713 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2716 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2717 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2718 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2719 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2720 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2721 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2722 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2723 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2724 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2725 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2726 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2727 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2728 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2729 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2730 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2731 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2732 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2733 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2734 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2735 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2736 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2737 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2738 appeared one additional time.
2740 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2741 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2742 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2743 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2746 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2747 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2748 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2749 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2750 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2751 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2752 if there were more than 338.
2754 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2755 - false --help now exits nonzero
2758 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2759 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2760 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2761 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2764 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2765 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2766 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2767 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2768 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2771 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2772 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2773 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2774 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2775 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2776 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2777 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2780 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2781 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2782 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2783 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2784 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2785 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2787 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2788 under certain unusual conditions
2789 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2790 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2793 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2794 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2795 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2796 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2797 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2798 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2799 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2800 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2801 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2802 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2803 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2804 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2805 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2806 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2807 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2808 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2811 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2812 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2815 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2816 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2817 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2818 involving hard-linked directories
2819 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2820 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2821 character-special and block files
2824 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2825 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2826 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2827 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2828 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2829 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2830 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2831 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2832 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2834 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2835 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2836 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2837 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2838 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2839 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2840 specified on the command line.
2841 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2842 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2843 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2844 the first file untouched.
2845 * readlink: new program
2846 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2847 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2848 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2849 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2850 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2851 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2854 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2855 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2856 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2857 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2858 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2859 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2860 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2861 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2862 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2863 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2864 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2865 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2867 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2868 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2869 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2871 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2872 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2873 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2874 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2875 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2876 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2877 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2878 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2881 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2882 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2885 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2886 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2887 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2888 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2889 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2890 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2891 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2894 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2895 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2897 ========================================================================
2898 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2899 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2902 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2904 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2905 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2906 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2907 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2908 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2909 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2910 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2911 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2912 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2913 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2914 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2915 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2917 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2918 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2919 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2920 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2922 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2925 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2927 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2928 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2929 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2930 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2931 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2932 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2933 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2936 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2937 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2938 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2939 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2940 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2941 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2942 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2943 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2944 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2945 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2946 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2947 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2948 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2949 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2950 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2951 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2953 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2954 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2956 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2957 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2958 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2959 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2960 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2961 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2963 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2964 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2965 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2966 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2967 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2968 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2969 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2971 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2972 the source files in the following example:
2973 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2974 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2975 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2976 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2977 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2978 links between source files with --preserve=links
2979 * cp accepts new options:
2980 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2981 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2982 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2983 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2984 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2985 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2986 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2987 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2988 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2990 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2991 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2992 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2993 even though it's older than dest.
2994 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2995 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2996 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2997 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2998 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3000 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3001 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3002 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3003 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3004 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3005 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3006 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3008 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3009 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3010 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3012 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3013 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3014 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3015 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3016 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3017 This is the default.
3019 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3020 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3021 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3022 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3023 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3025 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3028 ========================================================================
3029 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3030 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3033 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3034 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3036 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3037 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3038 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3039 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3040 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3042 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3043 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3044 that specifies a non-directory
3047 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3048 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3049 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3050 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3051 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3052 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3053 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3054 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3055 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3056 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3057 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3058 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3059 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3060 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3061 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3062 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3063 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3064 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3065 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3066 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3067 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3068 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3069 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3070 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3072 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3073 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3074 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3076 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3078 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3079 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3081 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3082 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3083 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3084 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3085 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3087 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3088 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3089 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3090 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3091 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3093 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3095 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3096 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3097 * still more portability fixes
3098 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3099 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3101 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3103 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3105 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3107 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3108 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3109 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3110 there is any time remaining
3111 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3113 ========================================================================
3114 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3115 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3117 This package began as the union of the following:
3118 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3120 ========================================================================
3122 Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3124 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3125 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3126 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3127 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3128 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3129 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.