1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7-dirty (????-??-??) [stable]
7 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
8 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
10 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
11 support but with insufficient /proc support.
13 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
14 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
16 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
17 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
18 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
19 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
20 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
21 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
23 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
24 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
27 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
28 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
30 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
33 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
34 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
35 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
37 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
38 Before it would print nothing.
40 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
44 By default, sort usually compresses each temporary file it writes.
45 When sorting very large inputs, this can result in sort using far
46 less temporary disk space and in improved performance.
50 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
51 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
52 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
53 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
56 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
60 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
61 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
62 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
63 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
64 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
65 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
66 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
68 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
69 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
70 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
71 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
72 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
73 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
74 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
75 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
77 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
78 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
79 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
82 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
86 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
87 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
89 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
90 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
91 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
93 ** Improved robustness
95 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
96 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
97 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
100 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
104 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
105 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
106 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
107 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
108 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
110 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
114 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
117 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
121 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
122 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
123 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
124 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
126 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
127 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
129 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
130 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
131 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
134 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
136 ** Improved robustness
138 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
139 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
141 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
142 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
143 or NFS-mounted partition.
145 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
146 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
150 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
151 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
152 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
153 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
154 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
155 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
157 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
158 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
160 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
161 or neglect to report file removal.
163 For the "groups" command:
165 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
166 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
168 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
170 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
172 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
176 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
177 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
180 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
182 ** Changes in behavior
184 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
185 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
186 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
187 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
189 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
190 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
191 a final `./' or `../' component.
193 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
194 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
197 ** Infrastructure changes
199 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
200 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
201 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
202 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
206 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
209 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
210 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
211 dirent.d_type support.
213 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
214 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
216 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
217 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
218 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
219 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
222 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
224 ** Changes in behavior
226 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
230 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
231 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
235 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
236 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
237 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
239 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
240 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
242 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
243 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
245 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
247 ** Improved robustness
249 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
250 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
251 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
253 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
254 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
257 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
258 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
260 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
261 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
263 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
264 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
266 ** Changes in behavior
268 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
269 where the two are distinct.
271 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
272 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
273 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
274 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
275 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
276 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
277 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
278 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
279 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
280 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
281 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
282 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
283 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
284 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
285 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
286 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
287 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
289 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
290 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
291 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
293 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
294 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
295 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
296 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
299 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
300 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
304 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
305 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
306 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
307 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
309 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
310 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
311 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
313 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
314 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
315 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
316 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
317 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
320 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
321 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
323 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
324 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
325 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
326 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
328 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
329 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
330 successful and the output is easier to parse.
332 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
333 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
334 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
335 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
337 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
338 and sticky) with the -m option.
340 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
341 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
342 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
343 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
344 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
346 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
347 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
349 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
353 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
354 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
355 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
356 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
358 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
360 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
362 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
363 silently ignoring one of them.
365 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
366 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
367 containing this change was 5.92.
369 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
370 automatically newline terminated.
372 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
373 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
374 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
375 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
378 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
379 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
380 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
383 ** Scheduled for removal
385 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
386 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
388 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
389 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
390 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
391 command to unlink a directory.
393 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
394 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
395 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
396 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
400 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
401 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
402 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
403 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
404 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
405 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
409 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
410 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
412 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
414 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
415 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
416 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
418 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
419 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
422 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
423 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
425 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
426 list directories before files.
428 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
429 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
430 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
431 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
434 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
436 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
438 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
439 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
440 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
442 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
443 list of NUL-terminated file names.
447 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
448 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
449 usually printing nothing.
451 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
453 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
454 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
455 them with hard-linked directories.
457 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
458 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
459 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
461 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
462 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
463 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
465 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
468 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
469 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
471 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
472 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
474 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
475 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
477 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
478 all command-line arguments.
480 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
482 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
484 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
485 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
487 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
489 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
490 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
491 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
492 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
493 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
495 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
496 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
498 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
499 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
500 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
501 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
503 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
505 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
509 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
510 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
512 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
513 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
515 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
516 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
518 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
519 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
521 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
522 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
524 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
526 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
527 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
528 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
531 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
533 ** Build-related bug fixes
535 installing .mo files would fail
538 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
542 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
544 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
547 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
551 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
552 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
556 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
558 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
559 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
561 ** Deprecated options
563 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
564 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
566 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
570 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
572 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
573 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
574 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
575 conforming to older POSIX versions.
577 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
580 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
586 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
591 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
593 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
595 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
596 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
597 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
599 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
600 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
601 problematic usages. These include:
603 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
604 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
605 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
606 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
607 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
608 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
609 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
610 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
611 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
613 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
614 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
616 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
617 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
618 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
619 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
621 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
622 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
623 between binary and text files.
625 The following programs now always use text input/output:
629 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
633 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
634 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
637 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
639 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
640 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
642 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
643 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
644 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
646 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
648 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
650 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
651 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
652 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
656 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
658 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
659 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
661 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
662 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
663 blocks until F contains N blocks.
667 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
668 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
672 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
673 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
674 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
678 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
679 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
683 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
685 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
687 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
691 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
692 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
693 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
695 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
696 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
697 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
698 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
699 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
701 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
705 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
706 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
707 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
709 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
711 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
712 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
713 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
714 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
716 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
718 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
719 rather than silently wrapping around.
721 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
722 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
724 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
725 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
727 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
728 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
729 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
732 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
734 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
736 ** Improved robustness
738 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
739 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
740 no matter how large the result.
742 ** Improved portability
744 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
745 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
747 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
749 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
750 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
751 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
753 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
754 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
758 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
759 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
761 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
763 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
764 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
765 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
766 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
768 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
769 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
771 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
772 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
773 categories if not specified by dircolors.
775 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
777 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
778 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
780 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
781 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
783 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
785 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
786 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
788 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
789 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
791 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
792 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
793 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
795 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
797 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
799 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
803 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
805 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
806 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
807 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
809 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
810 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
812 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
813 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
814 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
816 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
817 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
819 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
820 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
821 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
822 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
824 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
825 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
827 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
828 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
829 the file system does not support it.
831 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
833 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
834 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
836 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
838 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
839 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
841 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
842 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
843 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
844 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
846 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
847 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
850 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
851 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
852 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
853 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
855 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
856 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
857 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
858 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
860 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
861 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
863 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
865 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
866 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
867 reporting incorrect results.
871 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
872 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
874 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
877 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
879 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
880 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
882 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
883 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
885 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
888 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
889 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
890 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
891 the file name does not look like a page range.
893 printf has several changes:
895 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
896 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
898 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
899 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
900 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
902 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
903 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
906 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
907 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
909 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
910 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
912 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
914 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
915 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
917 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
919 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
921 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
922 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
923 when first encountering the directory.
927 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
928 output; POSIX requires this.
930 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
931 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
933 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
935 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
936 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
938 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
939 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
941 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
942 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
943 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
944 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
945 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
946 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
947 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
949 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
950 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
951 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
953 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
954 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
956 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
958 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
960 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
961 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
962 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
963 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
965 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
969 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
970 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
971 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
972 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
973 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
975 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
976 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
977 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
979 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
980 is longer than PATH_MAX.
982 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
983 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
985 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
986 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
987 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
988 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
989 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
991 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
992 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
994 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
995 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
997 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
999 nocreat do not create the output file
1000 excl fail if the output file already exists
1001 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1002 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1004 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1006 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1007 direct use direct I/O for data
1008 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1009 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1010 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1011 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1012 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1014 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1016 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1017 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1020 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1021 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1022 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1023 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1024 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1025 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1027 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1028 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1030 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1033 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1035 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1037 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1038 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1040 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1041 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1042 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1044 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1045 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1046 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1048 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1050 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1051 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1053 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1054 for compatibility with bash.
1056 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1058 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1059 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1060 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1061 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1063 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1064 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1066 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1067 ls supports TABSIZE.
1068 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1069 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1070 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1072 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1075 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1077 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1078 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1079 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1080 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1081 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1082 an offset, not as a file name.
1084 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1085 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1087 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1088 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1090 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1091 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1093 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1094 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1095 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1097 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1098 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1100 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1101 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1105 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1107 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1109 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1113 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1114 or more arguments between partitions.
1116 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1117 holes in the destination.
1119 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1120 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1121 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1122 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1123 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1124 terminates immediately.
1126 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1128 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1130 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1131 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1132 not the empty string.
1134 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1135 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1139 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1140 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1141 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1144 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1151 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1155 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1156 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1158 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1159 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1161 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1162 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1163 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1166 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1170 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1171 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1173 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1174 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1176 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1177 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1178 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1180 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1182 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1185 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1187 ** Configuration option
1189 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1190 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1194 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1195 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1199 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1200 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1201 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1204 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1205 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1206 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1207 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1208 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1209 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1210 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1213 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1217 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1218 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1219 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1221 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1222 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1224 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1226 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1227 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1228 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1229 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1231 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1233 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1234 not just the ones that reference directories
1236 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1237 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1239 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1240 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1241 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1243 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1244 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1245 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1246 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1247 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1248 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1250 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1255 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1256 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1258 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1260 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1262 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1264 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1265 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1267 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1268 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1270 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1272 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1276 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1278 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1280 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1281 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1282 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1283 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1284 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1286 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1287 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1289 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1290 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1292 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1293 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1295 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1296 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1297 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1301 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1302 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1303 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1304 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1305 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1306 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1307 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1308 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1309 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1310 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1311 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1312 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1313 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1314 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1316 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1318 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1319 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1321 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1323 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1325 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1326 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1328 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1330 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1331 without a trailing newline.
1333 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1334 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1336 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1339 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1343 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1345 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1347 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1348 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1349 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1350 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1352 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1354 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1355 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1356 be printed without leading spaces.
1358 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1359 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1364 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1365 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1366 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1368 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1370 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1371 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1373 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1374 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1376 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1377 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1379 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1381 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1383 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1385 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1386 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1388 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1390 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1392 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1393 byte offsets are specified.
1396 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1399 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1402 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1403 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1404 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1405 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1406 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1407 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1408 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1409 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1410 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1411 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1412 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1413 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1414 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1415 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1416 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1417 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1418 directory where M has write access.
1419 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1420 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1421 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1424 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1425 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1426 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1427 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1428 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1429 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1430 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1431 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1432 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1433 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1434 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1435 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1436 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1437 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1438 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1439 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1440 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1441 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1442 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1443 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1444 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1445 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1446 appeared one additional time.
1448 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1449 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1450 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1451 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1454 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1455 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1456 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1457 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1458 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1459 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1460 if there were more than 338.
1462 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1463 - false --help now exits nonzero
1466 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1467 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1468 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1469 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1472 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1473 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1474 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1475 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1476 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1479 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1480 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1481 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1482 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1483 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1484 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1485 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1488 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1489 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1490 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1491 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1492 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1493 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1495 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1496 under certain unusual conditions
1497 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1498 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1501 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1502 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1503 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1504 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1505 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1506 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1507 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1508 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1509 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1510 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1511 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1512 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1513 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1514 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1515 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1516 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1519 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1520 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1523 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1524 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1525 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1526 involving hard-linked directories
1527 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1528 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1529 character-special and block files
1532 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1533 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1534 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1535 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1536 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1537 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1538 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1539 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1540 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1542 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1543 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1544 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1545 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1546 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1547 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1548 specified on the command line.
1549 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1550 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1551 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1552 the first file untouched.
1553 * readlink: new program
1554 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1555 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1556 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1557 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1558 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1559 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1562 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1563 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1564 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1565 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1566 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1567 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1568 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1569 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1570 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1571 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1572 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1573 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1575 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1576 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1577 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1579 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1580 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1581 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1582 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1583 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1584 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1585 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1586 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1589 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1590 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1593 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1594 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1595 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1596 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1597 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1598 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1599 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1602 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1603 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1605 ========================================================================
1606 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1607 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1610 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1612 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1613 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1614 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1615 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1616 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1617 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1618 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1619 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1620 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1621 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1622 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1623 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1625 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1626 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1627 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1628 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1630 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1633 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1635 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1636 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1637 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1638 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1639 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1640 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1641 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1644 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1645 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1646 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1647 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1648 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1649 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1650 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1651 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1652 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1653 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1654 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1655 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1656 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1657 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1658 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1659 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1661 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1662 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1664 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1665 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1666 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1667 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1668 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1669 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1671 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1672 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1673 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1674 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1675 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1676 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1677 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1679 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1680 the source files in the following example:
1681 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1682 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1683 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1684 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1685 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1686 links between source files with --preserve=links
1687 * cp accepts new options:
1688 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1689 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1690 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1691 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1692 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1693 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1694 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1695 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1696 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1698 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1699 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1700 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1701 even though it's older than dest.
1702 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1703 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1704 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1705 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1706 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1708 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1709 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1710 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1711 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1712 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1713 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1714 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1716 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1717 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1718 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1720 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1721 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1722 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1723 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1724 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1725 This is the default.
1727 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1728 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1729 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1730 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1731 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1733 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1736 ========================================================================
1737 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1738 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1741 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1742 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1744 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1745 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1746 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1747 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1748 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1750 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1751 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1752 that specifies a non-directory
1755 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1756 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1757 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1758 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1759 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1760 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1761 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1762 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1763 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1764 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1765 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1766 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1767 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1768 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1769 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1770 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1771 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1772 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1773 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1774 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1775 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1776 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1777 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1778 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1780 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1781 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1782 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1784 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1786 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1787 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1789 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1790 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1791 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1792 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1793 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1795 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1796 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1797 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1798 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1799 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1801 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1803 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1804 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1805 * still more portability fixes
1806 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1807 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1809 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1811 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1813 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1815 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1816 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1817 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1818 there is any time remaining
1819 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1821 ========================================================================
1822 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1823 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1825 This package began as the union of the following:
1826 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1828 ========================================================================
1830 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1833 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1834 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1835 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1836 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1837 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1838 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.