1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (????-??-??) [beta]
6 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
10 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
11 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
13 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
15 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
17 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
19 ** Programs no longer installed by default
23 ** Changes in behavior
25 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
26 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
28 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
29 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
31 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
32 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
33 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
37 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
38 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
39 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
40 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
41 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
42 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
43 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
44 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
45 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
46 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
47 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
49 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
52 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
53 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
54 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
56 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
57 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
58 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
63 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
64 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
65 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
66 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
68 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
69 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
70 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
71 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
72 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
73 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
76 ** Remove deprecated options
78 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
79 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
80 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
81 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
82 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
84 ** Improved robustness
86 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
87 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
88 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
89 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
90 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
91 loss of the contents of a/f.
93 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
94 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
98 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
99 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
100 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
102 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
103 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
104 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
105 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
107 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
108 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
109 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
110 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
111 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
112 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
113 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
114 destination is a symlink.
116 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
118 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
119 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
121 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
122 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
124 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
126 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
127 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
129 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
130 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
132 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
135 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
136 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
138 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
139 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
141 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
142 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
143 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
144 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
146 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
147 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
148 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
150 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
151 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
152 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
154 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
155 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
156 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
157 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
159 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
160 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
161 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
163 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
164 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
166 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
167 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
169 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
171 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
172 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
173 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
175 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
176 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
178 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
179 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
181 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
182 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
184 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
185 [present in the original version]
188 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
192 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
194 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
195 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
196 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
198 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
199 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
201 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
205 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
206 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
208 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
209 support but with insufficient /proc support.
211 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
212 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
214 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
215 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
216 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
217 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
218 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
219 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
221 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
222 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
225 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
226 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
228 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
231 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
232 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
233 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
235 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
236 directory is unreadable.
238 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
239 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
240 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
242 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
243 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
244 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
245 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
246 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
249 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
250 Before it would print nothing.
252 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
254 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
255 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
256 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
257 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
258 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
259 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
260 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
261 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
263 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
267 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
268 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
269 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
271 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
272 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
273 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
274 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
277 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
281 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
282 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
283 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
284 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
285 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
286 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
287 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
289 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
290 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
291 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
292 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
293 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
294 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
295 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
296 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
298 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
299 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
300 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
303 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
307 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
308 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
310 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
311 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
312 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
314 ** Improved robustness
316 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
317 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
318 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
321 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
325 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
326 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
327 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
328 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
329 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
331 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
335 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
338 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
342 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
343 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
344 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
345 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
347 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
348 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
350 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
351 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
352 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
355 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
357 ** Improved robustness
359 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
360 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
362 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
363 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
364 or NFS-mounted partition.
366 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
367 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
371 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
372 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
373 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
374 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
375 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
376 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
378 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
379 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
381 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
382 or neglect to report file removal.
384 For the "groups" command:
386 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
387 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
389 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
391 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
393 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
397 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
398 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
401 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
403 ** Changes in behavior
405 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
406 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
407 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
408 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
410 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
411 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
412 a final `./' or `../' component.
414 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
415 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
418 ** Infrastructure changes
420 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
421 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
422 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
423 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
427 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
430 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
431 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
432 dirent.d_type support.
434 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
435 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
437 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
438 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
439 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
440 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
443 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
445 ** Changes in behavior
447 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
451 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
452 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
456 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
457 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
458 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
460 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
461 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
463 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
464 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
466 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
468 ** Improved robustness
470 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
471 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
472 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
474 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
475 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
478 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
479 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
481 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
482 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
484 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
485 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
487 ** Changes in behavior
489 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
490 where the two are distinct.
492 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
493 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
494 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
495 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
496 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
497 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
498 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
499 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
500 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
501 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
502 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
503 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
504 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
505 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
506 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
507 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
508 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
510 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
511 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
512 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
514 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
515 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
516 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
517 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
520 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
521 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
525 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
526 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
527 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
528 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
530 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
531 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
532 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
534 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
535 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
536 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
537 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
538 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
541 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
542 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
544 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
545 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
546 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
547 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
549 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
550 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
551 successful and the output is easier to parse.
553 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
554 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
555 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
556 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
558 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
559 and sticky) with the -m option.
561 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
562 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
563 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
564 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
565 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
567 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
568 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
570 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
574 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
575 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
576 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
577 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
579 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
581 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
583 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
584 silently ignoring one of them.
586 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
587 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
588 containing this change was 5.92.
590 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
591 automatically newline terminated.
593 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
594 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
595 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
596 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
599 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
600 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
601 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
604 ** Scheduled for removal
606 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
607 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
609 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
610 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
611 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
612 command to unlink a directory.
614 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
615 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
616 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
617 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
621 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
622 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
623 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
624 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
625 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
626 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
630 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
631 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
633 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
635 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
636 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
637 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
639 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
640 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
643 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
644 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
646 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
647 list directories before files.
649 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
650 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
651 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
652 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
655 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
657 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
659 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
660 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
661 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
663 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
664 list of NUL-terminated file names.
668 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
669 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
670 usually printing nothing.
672 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
674 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
675 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
676 them with hard-linked directories.
678 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
679 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
680 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
682 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
683 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
684 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
686 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
689 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
690 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
692 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
693 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
695 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
696 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
698 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
699 all command-line arguments.
701 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
703 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
705 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
706 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
708 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
710 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
711 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
712 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
713 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
714 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
716 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
717 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
719 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
720 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
721 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
722 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
724 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
726 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
730 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
731 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
733 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
734 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
736 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
737 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
739 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
740 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
742 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
743 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
745 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
747 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
748 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
749 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
752 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
754 ** Build-related bug fixes
756 installing .mo files would fail
759 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
763 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
765 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
768 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
772 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
773 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
777 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
779 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
780 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
782 ** Deprecated options
784 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
785 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
787 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
791 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
793 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
794 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
795 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
796 conforming to older POSIX versions.
798 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
801 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
807 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
812 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
814 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
816 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
817 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
818 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
820 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
821 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
822 problematic usages. These include:
824 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
825 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
826 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
827 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
828 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
829 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
830 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
831 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
832 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
834 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
835 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
837 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
838 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
839 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
840 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
842 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
843 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
844 between binary and text files.
846 The following programs now always use text input/output:
850 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
854 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
855 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
858 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
860 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
861 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
863 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
864 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
865 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
867 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
869 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
871 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
872 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
873 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
877 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
879 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
880 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
882 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
883 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
884 blocks until F contains N blocks.
888 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
889 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
893 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
894 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
895 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
899 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
900 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
904 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
906 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
908 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
912 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
913 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
914 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
916 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
917 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
918 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
919 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
920 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
922 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
926 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
927 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
928 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
930 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
932 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
933 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
934 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
935 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
937 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
939 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
940 rather than silently wrapping around.
942 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
943 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
945 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
946 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
948 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
949 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
950 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
953 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
955 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
957 ** Improved robustness
959 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
960 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
961 no matter how large the result.
963 ** Improved portability
965 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
966 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
968 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
970 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
971 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
972 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
974 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
975 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
979 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
980 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
982 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
984 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
985 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
986 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
987 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
989 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
990 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
992 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
993 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
994 categories if not specified by dircolors.
996 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
998 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
999 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1001 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1002 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1004 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1006 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1007 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1009 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1010 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1012 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1013 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1014 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1016 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1018 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1020 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1024 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1026 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1027 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1028 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1030 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1031 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1033 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1034 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1035 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1037 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1038 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1040 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1041 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1042 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1043 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1045 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1046 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1048 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1049 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1050 the file system does not support it.
1052 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1054 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1055 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1057 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1059 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1060 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1062 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1063 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1064 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1065 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1067 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1068 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1071 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1072 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1073 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1074 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1076 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1077 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1078 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1079 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1081 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1082 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1084 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1086 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1087 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1088 reporting incorrect results.
1092 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1093 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1095 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1098 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1100 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1101 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1103 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1104 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1106 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1109 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1110 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1111 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1112 the file name does not look like a page range.
1114 printf has several changes:
1116 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1117 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1119 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1120 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1121 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1123 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1124 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1127 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1128 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1130 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1131 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1133 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1135 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1136 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1138 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1140 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1142 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1143 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1144 when first encountering the directory.
1148 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1149 output; POSIX requires this.
1151 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1152 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1154 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1156 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1157 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1159 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1160 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1162 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1163 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1164 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1165 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1166 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1167 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1168 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1170 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1171 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1172 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1174 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1175 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1177 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1179 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1181 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1182 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1183 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1184 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1186 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1190 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1191 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1192 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1193 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1194 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1196 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1197 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1198 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1200 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1201 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1203 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1204 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1206 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1207 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1208 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1209 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1210 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1212 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1213 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1215 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1216 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1218 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1220 nocreat do not create the output file
1221 excl fail if the output file already exists
1222 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1223 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1225 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1227 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1228 direct use direct I/O for data
1229 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1230 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1231 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1232 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1233 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1235 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1237 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1238 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1241 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1242 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1243 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1244 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1245 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1246 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1248 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1249 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1251 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1254 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1256 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1258 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1259 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1261 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1262 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1263 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1265 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1266 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1267 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1269 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1271 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1272 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1274 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1275 for compatibility with bash.
1277 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1279 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1280 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1281 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1282 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1284 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1285 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1287 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1288 ls supports TABSIZE.
1289 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1290 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1291 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1293 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1296 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1298 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1299 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1300 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1301 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1302 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1303 an offset, not as a file name.
1305 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1306 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1308 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1309 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1311 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1312 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1314 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1315 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1316 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1318 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1319 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1321 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1322 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1326 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1328 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1330 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1334 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1335 or more arguments between partitions.
1337 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1338 holes in the destination.
1340 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1341 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1342 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1343 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1344 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1345 terminates immediately.
1347 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1349 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1351 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1352 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1353 not the empty string.
1355 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1356 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1360 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1361 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1362 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1365 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1372 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1376 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1377 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1379 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1380 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1382 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1383 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1384 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1387 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1391 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1392 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1394 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1395 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1397 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1398 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1399 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1401 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1403 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1406 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1408 ** Configuration option
1410 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1411 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1415 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1416 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1420 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1421 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1422 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1425 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1426 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1427 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1428 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1429 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1430 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1431 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1434 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1438 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1439 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1440 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1442 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1443 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1445 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1447 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1448 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1449 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1450 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1452 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1454 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1455 not just the ones that reference directories
1457 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1458 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1460 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1461 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1462 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1464 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1465 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1466 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1467 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1468 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1469 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1471 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1476 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1477 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1479 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1481 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1483 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1485 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1486 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1488 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1489 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1491 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1493 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1497 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1499 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1501 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1502 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1503 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1504 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1505 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1507 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1508 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1510 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1511 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1513 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1514 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1516 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1517 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1518 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1522 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1523 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1524 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1525 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1526 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1527 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1528 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1529 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1530 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1531 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1532 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1533 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1534 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1535 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1537 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1539 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1540 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1542 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1544 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1546 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1547 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1549 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1551 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1552 without a trailing newline.
1554 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1555 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1557 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1560 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1564 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1566 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1568 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1569 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1570 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1571 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1573 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1575 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1576 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1577 be printed without leading spaces.
1579 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1580 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1585 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1586 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1587 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1589 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1591 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1592 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1594 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1595 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1597 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1598 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1600 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1602 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1604 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1606 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1607 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1609 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1611 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1613 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1614 byte offsets are specified.
1617 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1620 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1623 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1624 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1625 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1626 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1627 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1628 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1629 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1630 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1631 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1632 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1633 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1634 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1635 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1636 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1637 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1638 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1639 directory where M has write access.
1640 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1641 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1642 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1645 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1646 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1647 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1648 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1649 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1650 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1651 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1652 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1653 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1654 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1655 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1656 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1657 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1658 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1659 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1660 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1661 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1662 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1663 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1664 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1665 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1666 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1667 appeared one additional time.
1669 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1670 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1671 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1672 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1675 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1676 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1677 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1678 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1679 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1680 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1681 if there were more than 338.
1683 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1684 - false --help now exits nonzero
1687 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1688 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1689 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1690 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1693 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1694 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1695 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1696 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1697 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1700 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1701 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1702 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1703 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1704 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1705 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1706 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1709 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1710 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1711 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1712 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1713 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1714 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1716 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1717 under certain unusual conditions
1718 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1719 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1722 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1723 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1724 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1725 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1726 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1727 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1728 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1729 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1730 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1731 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1732 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1733 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1734 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1735 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1736 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1737 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1740 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1741 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1744 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1745 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1746 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1747 involving hard-linked directories
1748 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1749 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1750 character-special and block files
1753 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1754 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1755 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1756 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1757 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1758 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1759 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1760 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1761 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1763 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1764 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1765 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1766 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1767 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1768 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1769 specified on the command line.
1770 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1771 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1772 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1773 the first file untouched.
1774 * readlink: new program
1775 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1776 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1777 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1778 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1779 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1780 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1783 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1784 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1785 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1786 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1787 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1788 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1789 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1790 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1791 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1792 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1793 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1794 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1796 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1797 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1798 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1800 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1801 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1802 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1803 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1804 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1805 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1806 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1807 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1810 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1811 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1814 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1815 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1816 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1817 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1818 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1819 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1820 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1823 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1824 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1826 ========================================================================
1827 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1828 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1831 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1833 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1834 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1835 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1836 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1837 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1838 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1839 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1840 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1841 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1842 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1843 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1844 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1846 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1847 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1848 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1849 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1851 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1854 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1856 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1857 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1858 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1859 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1860 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1861 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1862 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1865 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1866 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1867 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1868 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1869 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1870 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1871 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1872 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1873 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1874 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1875 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1876 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1877 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1878 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1879 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1880 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1882 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1883 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1885 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1886 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1887 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1888 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1889 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1890 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1892 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1893 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1894 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1895 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1896 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1897 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1898 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1900 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1901 the source files in the following example:
1902 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1903 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1904 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1905 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1906 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1907 links between source files with --preserve=links
1908 * cp accepts new options:
1909 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1910 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1911 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1912 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1913 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1914 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1915 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1916 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1917 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1919 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1920 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1921 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1922 even though it's older than dest.
1923 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1924 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1925 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1926 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1927 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1929 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1930 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1931 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1932 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1933 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1934 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1935 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1937 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1938 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1939 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1941 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1942 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1943 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1944 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1945 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1946 This is the default.
1948 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1949 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1950 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1951 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1952 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1954 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1957 ========================================================================
1958 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1959 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1962 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1963 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1965 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1966 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1967 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1968 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1969 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1971 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1972 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1973 that specifies a non-directory
1976 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1977 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1978 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1979 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1980 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1981 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1982 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1983 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1984 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1985 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1986 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1987 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1988 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1989 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1990 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1991 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1992 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1993 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1994 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1995 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1996 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1997 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1998 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1999 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2001 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2002 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2003 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2005 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2007 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2008 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2010 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2011 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2012 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2013 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2014 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2016 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2017 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2018 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2019 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2020 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2022 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2024 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2025 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2026 * still more portability fixes
2027 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2028 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2030 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2032 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2034 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2036 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2037 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2038 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2039 there is any time remaining
2040 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2042 ========================================================================
2043 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2044 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2046 This package began as the union of the following:
2047 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2049 ========================================================================
2051 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2054 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2055 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2056 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2057 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2058 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2059 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.