1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.?? (2008-??-??) [stable]
7 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
9 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
10 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
12 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
13 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
15 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
17 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
18 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
19 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
21 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
22 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
24 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
25 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
26 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
27 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
29 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
30 in more cases when a directory is empty.
32 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
33 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
34 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
38 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
39 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
41 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
42 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
43 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
44 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
48 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
49 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
51 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
53 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
57 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
58 which have negative errno values.
62 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
66 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
70 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
71 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
74 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
78 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
79 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
80 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
82 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
83 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
84 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
85 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
89 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
90 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
91 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
92 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
95 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
99 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
101 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
102 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
103 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
106 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
110 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
111 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
113 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
115 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
117 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
119 ** Programs no longer installed by default
123 ** Changes in behavior
125 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
126 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
128 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
129 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
131 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
132 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
133 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
137 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
138 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
139 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
140 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
141 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
142 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
143 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
144 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
145 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
146 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
147 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
149 The following commands and options now support the standard size
150 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
151 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
154 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
157 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
158 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
159 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
161 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
162 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
163 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
168 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
169 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
170 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
171 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
173 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
174 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
175 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
176 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
177 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
178 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
179 of "make check" fail.
181 ** Remove deprecated options
183 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
184 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
185 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
186 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
187 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
189 ** Improved robustness
191 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
192 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
193 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
194 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
195 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
196 loss of the contents of a/f.
198 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
199 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
203 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
204 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
205 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
207 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
208 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
209 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
210 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
212 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
213 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
214 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
215 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
216 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
217 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
218 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
219 destination is a symlink.
221 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
223 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
224 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
226 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
227 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
229 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
231 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
232 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
234 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
235 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
237 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
240 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
241 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
243 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
244 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
246 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
247 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
248 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
249 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
251 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
252 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
253 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
255 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
256 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
257 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
259 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
260 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
261 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
262 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
264 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
265 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
266 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
268 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
269 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
271 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
272 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
274 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
276 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
277 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
278 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
280 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
281 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
283 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
284 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
286 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
287 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
289 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
290 [present in the original version]
293 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
297 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
299 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
300 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
301 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
303 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
304 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
306 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
310 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
311 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
313 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
314 support but with insufficient /proc support.
316 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
317 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
319 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
320 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
321 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
322 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
323 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
324 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
326 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
327 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
330 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
331 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
333 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
336 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
337 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
338 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
340 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
341 directory is unreadable.
343 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
344 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
345 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
347 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
348 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
349 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
350 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
351 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
354 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
355 Before it would print nothing.
357 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
359 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
360 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
361 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
362 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
363 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
364 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
365 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
366 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
368 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
372 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
373 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
374 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
376 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
377 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
378 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
379 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
382 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
386 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
387 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
388 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
389 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
390 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
391 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
392 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
394 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
395 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
396 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
397 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
398 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
399 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
400 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
401 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
403 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
404 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
405 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
408 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
412 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
413 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
415 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
416 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
417 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
419 ** Improved robustness
421 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
422 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
423 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
426 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
430 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
431 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
432 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
433 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
434 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
436 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
440 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
443 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
447 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
448 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
449 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
450 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
452 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
453 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
455 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
456 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
457 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
460 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
462 ** Improved robustness
464 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
465 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
467 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
468 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
469 or NFS-mounted partition.
471 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
472 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
476 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
477 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
478 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
479 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
480 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
481 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
483 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
484 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
486 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
487 or neglect to report file removal.
489 For the "groups" command:
491 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
492 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
494 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
496 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
498 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
502 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
503 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
506 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
508 ** Changes in behavior
510 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
511 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
512 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
513 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
515 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
516 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
517 a final `./' or `../' component.
519 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
520 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
523 ** Infrastructure changes
525 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
526 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
527 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
528 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
532 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
535 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
536 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
537 dirent.d_type support.
539 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
540 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
542 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
543 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
544 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
545 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
548 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
550 ** Changes in behavior
552 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
556 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
557 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
561 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
562 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
563 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
565 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
566 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
568 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
569 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
571 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
573 ** Improved robustness
575 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
576 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
577 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
579 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
580 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
583 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
584 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
586 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
587 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
589 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
590 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
592 ** Changes in behavior
594 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
595 where the two are distinct.
597 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
598 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
599 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
600 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
601 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
602 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
603 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
604 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
605 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
606 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
607 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
608 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
609 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
610 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
611 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
612 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
613 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
615 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
616 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
617 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
619 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
620 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
621 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
622 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
625 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
626 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
630 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
631 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
632 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
633 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
635 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
636 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
637 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
639 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
640 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
641 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
642 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
643 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
646 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
647 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
649 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
650 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
651 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
652 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
654 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
655 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
656 successful and the output is easier to parse.
658 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
659 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
660 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
661 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
663 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
664 and sticky) with the -m option.
666 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
667 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
668 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
669 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
670 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
672 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
673 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
675 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
679 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
680 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
681 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
682 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
684 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
686 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
688 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
689 silently ignoring one of them.
691 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
692 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
693 containing this change was 5.92.
695 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
696 automatically newline terminated.
698 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
699 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
700 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
701 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
704 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
705 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
706 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
709 ** Scheduled for removal
711 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
712 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
714 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
715 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
716 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
717 command to unlink a directory.
719 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
720 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
721 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
722 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
726 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
727 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
728 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
729 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
730 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
731 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
735 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
736 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
738 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
740 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
741 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
742 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
744 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
745 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
748 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
749 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
751 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
752 list directories before files.
754 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
755 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
756 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
757 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
760 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
762 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
764 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
765 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
766 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
768 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
769 list of NUL-terminated file names.
773 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
774 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
775 usually printing nothing.
777 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
779 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
780 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
781 them with hard-linked directories.
783 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
784 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
785 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
787 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
788 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
789 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
791 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
794 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
795 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
797 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
798 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
800 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
801 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
803 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
804 all command-line arguments.
806 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
808 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
810 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
811 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
813 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
815 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
816 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
817 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
818 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
819 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
821 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
822 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
824 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
825 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
826 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
827 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
829 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
831 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
835 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
836 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
838 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
839 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
841 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
842 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
844 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
845 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
847 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
848 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
850 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
852 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
853 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
854 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
857 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
859 ** Build-related bug fixes
861 installing .mo files would fail
864 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
868 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
870 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
873 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
877 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
878 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
882 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
884 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
885 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
887 ** Deprecated options
889 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
890 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
892 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
896 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
898 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
899 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
900 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
901 conforming to older POSIX versions.
903 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
906 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
912 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
917 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
919 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
921 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
922 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
923 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
925 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
926 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
927 problematic usages. These include:
929 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
930 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
931 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
932 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
933 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
934 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
935 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
936 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
937 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
939 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
940 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
942 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
943 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
944 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
945 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
947 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
948 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
949 between binary and text files.
951 The following programs now always use text input/output:
955 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
959 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
960 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
963 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
965 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
966 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
968 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
969 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
970 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
972 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
974 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
976 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
977 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
978 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
982 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
984 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
985 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
987 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
988 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
989 blocks until F contains N blocks.
993 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
994 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
998 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
999 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1000 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1004 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1005 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1009 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1011 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1013 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1017 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1018 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1019 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1021 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1022 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1023 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1024 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1025 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1027 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1031 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1032 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1033 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1035 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1037 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1038 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1039 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1040 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1042 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1044 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1045 rather than silently wrapping around.
1047 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1048 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1050 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1051 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1053 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1054 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1055 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1056 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1058 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1060 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1062 ** Improved robustness
1064 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1065 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1066 no matter how large the result.
1068 ** Improved portability
1070 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1071 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1073 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1075 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1076 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1077 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1079 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1080 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1084 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1085 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1087 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1089 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1090 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1091 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1092 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1094 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1095 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1097 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1098 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1099 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1101 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1103 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1104 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1106 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1107 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1109 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1111 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1112 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1114 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1115 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1117 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1118 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1119 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1121 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1123 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1125 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1129 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1131 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1132 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1133 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1135 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1136 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1138 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1139 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1140 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1142 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1143 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1145 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1146 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1147 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1148 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1150 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1151 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1153 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1154 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1155 the file system does not support it.
1157 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1159 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1160 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1162 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1164 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1165 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1167 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1168 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1169 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1170 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1172 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1173 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1176 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1177 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1178 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1179 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1181 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1182 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1183 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1184 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1186 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1187 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1189 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1191 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1192 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1193 reporting incorrect results.
1197 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1198 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1200 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1203 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1205 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1206 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1208 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1209 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1211 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1214 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1215 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1216 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1217 the file name does not look like a page range.
1219 printf has several changes:
1221 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1222 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1224 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1225 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1226 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1228 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1229 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1232 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1233 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1235 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1236 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1238 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1240 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1241 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1243 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1245 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1247 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1248 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1249 when first encountering the directory.
1253 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1254 output; POSIX requires this.
1256 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1257 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1259 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1261 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1262 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1264 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1265 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1267 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1268 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1269 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1270 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1271 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1272 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1273 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1275 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1276 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1277 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1279 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1280 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1282 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1284 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1286 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1287 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1288 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1289 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1291 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1295 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1296 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1297 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1298 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1299 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1301 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1302 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1303 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1305 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1306 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1308 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1309 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1311 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1312 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1313 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1314 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1315 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1317 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1318 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1320 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1321 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1323 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1325 nocreat do not create the output file
1326 excl fail if the output file already exists
1327 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1328 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1330 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1332 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1333 direct use direct I/O for data
1334 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1335 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1336 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1337 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1338 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1340 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1342 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1343 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1346 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1347 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1348 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1349 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1350 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1351 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1353 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1354 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1356 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1359 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1361 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1363 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1364 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1366 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1367 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1368 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1370 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1371 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1372 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1374 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1376 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1377 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1379 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1380 for compatibility with bash.
1382 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1384 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1385 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1386 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1387 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1389 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1390 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1392 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1393 ls supports TABSIZE.
1394 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1395 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1396 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1398 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1401 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1403 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1404 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1405 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1406 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1407 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1408 an offset, not as a file name.
1410 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1411 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1413 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1414 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1416 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1417 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1419 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1420 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1421 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1423 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1424 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1426 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1427 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1431 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1433 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1435 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1439 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1440 or more arguments between partitions.
1442 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1443 holes in the destination.
1445 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1446 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1447 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1448 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1449 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1450 terminates immediately.
1452 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1454 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1456 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1457 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1458 not the empty string.
1460 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1461 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1465 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1466 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1467 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1470 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1477 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1481 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1482 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1484 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1485 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1487 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1488 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1489 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1492 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1496 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1497 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1499 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1500 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1502 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1503 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1504 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1506 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1508 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1511 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1513 ** Configuration option
1515 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1516 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1520 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1521 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1525 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1526 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1527 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1530 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1531 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1532 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1533 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1534 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1535 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1536 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1539 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1543 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1544 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1545 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1547 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1548 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1550 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1552 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1553 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1554 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1555 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1557 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1559 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1560 not just the ones that reference directories
1562 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1563 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1565 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1566 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1567 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1569 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1570 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1571 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1572 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1573 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1574 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1576 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1581 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1582 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1584 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1586 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1588 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1590 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1591 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1593 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1594 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1596 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1598 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1602 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1604 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1606 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1607 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1608 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1609 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1610 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1612 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1613 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1615 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1616 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1618 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1619 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1621 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1622 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1623 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1627 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1628 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1629 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1630 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1631 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1632 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1633 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1634 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1635 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1636 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1637 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1638 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1639 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1640 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1642 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1644 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1645 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1647 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1649 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1651 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1652 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1654 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1656 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1657 without a trailing newline.
1659 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1660 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1662 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1665 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1669 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1671 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1673 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1674 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1675 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1676 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1678 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1680 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1681 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1682 be printed without leading spaces.
1684 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1685 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1690 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1691 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1692 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1694 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1696 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1697 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1699 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1700 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1702 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1703 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1705 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1707 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1709 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1711 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1712 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1714 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1716 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1718 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1719 byte offsets are specified.
1722 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1725 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1728 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1729 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1730 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1731 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1732 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1733 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1734 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1735 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1736 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1737 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1738 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1739 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1740 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1741 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1742 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1743 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1744 directory where M has write access.
1745 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1746 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1747 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1750 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1751 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1752 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1753 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1754 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1755 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1756 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1757 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1758 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1759 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1760 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1761 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1762 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1763 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1764 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1765 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1766 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1767 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1768 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1769 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1770 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1771 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1772 appeared one additional time.
1774 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1775 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1776 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1777 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1780 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1781 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1782 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1783 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1784 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1785 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1786 if there were more than 338.
1788 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1789 - false --help now exits nonzero
1792 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1793 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1794 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1795 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1798 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1799 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1800 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1801 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1802 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1805 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1806 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1807 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1808 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1809 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1810 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1811 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1814 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1815 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1816 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1817 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1818 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1819 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1821 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1822 under certain unusual conditions
1823 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1824 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1827 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1828 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1829 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1830 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1831 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1832 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1833 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1834 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1835 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1836 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1837 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1838 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1839 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1840 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1841 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1842 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1845 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1846 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1849 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1850 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1851 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1852 involving hard-linked directories
1853 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1854 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1855 character-special and block files
1858 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1859 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1860 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1861 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1862 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1863 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1864 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1865 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1866 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1868 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1869 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1870 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1871 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1872 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1873 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1874 specified on the command line.
1875 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1876 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1877 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1878 the first file untouched.
1879 * readlink: new program
1880 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1881 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1882 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1883 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1884 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1885 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1888 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1889 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1890 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1891 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1892 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1893 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1894 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1895 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1896 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1897 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1898 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1899 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1901 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1902 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1903 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1905 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1906 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1907 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1908 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1909 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1910 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1911 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1912 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1915 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1916 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1919 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1920 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1921 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1922 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1923 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1924 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1925 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1928 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1929 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1931 ========================================================================
1932 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1933 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1936 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1938 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1939 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1940 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1941 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1942 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1943 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1944 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1945 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1946 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1947 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1948 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1949 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1951 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1952 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1953 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1954 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1956 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1959 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1961 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1962 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1963 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1964 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1965 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1966 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1967 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1970 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1971 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1972 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1973 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1974 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1975 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1976 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1977 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1978 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1979 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1980 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1981 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1982 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1983 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1984 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1985 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1987 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1988 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1990 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1991 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1992 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1993 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1994 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1995 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1997 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1998 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1999 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2000 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2001 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2002 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2003 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2005 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2006 the source files in the following example:
2007 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2008 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2009 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2010 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2011 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2012 links between source files with --preserve=links
2013 * cp accepts new options:
2014 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2015 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2016 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2017 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2018 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2019 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2020 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2021 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2022 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2024 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2025 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2026 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2027 even though it's older than dest.
2028 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2029 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2030 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2031 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2032 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2034 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2035 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2036 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2037 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2038 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2039 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2040 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2042 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2043 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2044 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2046 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2047 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2048 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2049 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2050 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2051 This is the default.
2053 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2054 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2055 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2056 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2057 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2059 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2062 ========================================================================
2063 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2064 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2067 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2068 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2070 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2071 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2072 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2073 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2074 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2076 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2077 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2078 that specifies a non-directory
2081 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2082 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2083 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2084 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2085 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2086 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2087 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2088 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2089 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2090 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2091 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2092 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2093 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2094 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2095 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2096 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2097 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2098 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2099 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2100 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2101 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2102 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2103 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2104 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2106 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2107 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2108 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2110 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2112 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2113 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2115 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2116 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2117 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2118 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2119 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2121 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2122 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2123 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2124 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2125 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2127 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2129 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2130 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2131 * still more portability fixes
2132 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2133 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2135 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2137 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2139 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2141 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2142 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2143 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2144 there is any time remaining
2145 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2147 ========================================================================
2148 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2149 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2151 This package began as the union of the following:
2152 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2154 ========================================================================
2156 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2159 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2160 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2161 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2162 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2163 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2164 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.