1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
7 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
8 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
10 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
12 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
14 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
16 ** Programs no longer installed by default
20 ** Changes in behavior
22 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
23 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
25 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
26 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
28 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
29 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
30 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
34 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
35 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
36 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
37 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
38 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
39 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
40 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
41 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
42 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
43 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
44 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
46 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
49 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
50 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
51 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
53 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
54 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
55 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
60 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
61 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
62 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
63 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
65 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
66 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
67 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
68 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
69 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
70 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
73 ** Remove deprecated options
75 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
76 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
77 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
78 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
79 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
81 ** Improved robustness
83 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
84 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
85 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
86 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
87 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
88 loss of the contents of a/f.
90 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
91 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
95 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
96 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
97 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
99 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
100 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
101 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
102 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
104 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
105 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
106 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
107 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
108 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
109 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
110 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
111 destination is a symlink.
113 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
115 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
116 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
118 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
119 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
121 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
123 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
124 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
126 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
127 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
129 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
132 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
133 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
135 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
136 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
138 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
139 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
140 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
141 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
143 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
144 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
145 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
147 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
148 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
149 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
151 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
152 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
153 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
154 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
156 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
157 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
158 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
160 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
161 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
163 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
164 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
166 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
168 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
169 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
170 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
172 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
173 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
175 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
176 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
178 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
179 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
181 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
182 [present in the original version]
185 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
189 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
191 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
192 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
193 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
195 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
196 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
198 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
202 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
203 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
205 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
206 support but with insufficient /proc support.
208 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
209 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
211 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
212 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
213 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
214 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
215 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
216 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
218 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
219 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
222 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
223 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
225 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
228 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
229 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
230 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
232 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
233 directory is unreadable.
235 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
236 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
237 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
239 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
240 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
241 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
242 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
243 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
246 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
247 Before it would print nothing.
249 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
251 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
252 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
253 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
254 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
255 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
256 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
257 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
258 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
260 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
264 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
265 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
266 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
268 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
269 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
270 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
271 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
274 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
278 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
279 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
280 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
281 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
282 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
283 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
284 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
286 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
287 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
288 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
289 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
290 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
291 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
292 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
293 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
295 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
296 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
297 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
300 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
304 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
305 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
307 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
308 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
309 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
311 ** Improved robustness
313 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
314 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
315 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
318 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
322 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
323 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
324 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
325 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
326 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
328 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
332 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
335 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
339 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
340 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
341 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
342 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
344 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
345 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
347 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
348 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
349 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
352 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
354 ** Improved robustness
356 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
357 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
359 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
360 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
361 or NFS-mounted partition.
363 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
364 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
368 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
369 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
370 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
371 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
372 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
373 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
375 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
376 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
378 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
379 or neglect to report file removal.
381 For the "groups" command:
383 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
384 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
386 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
388 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
390 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
394 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
395 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
398 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
400 ** Changes in behavior
402 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
403 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
404 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
405 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
407 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
408 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
409 a final `./' or `../' component.
411 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
412 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
415 ** Infrastructure changes
417 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
418 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
419 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
420 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
424 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
427 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
428 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
429 dirent.d_type support.
431 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
432 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
434 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
435 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
436 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
437 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
440 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
442 ** Changes in behavior
444 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
448 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
449 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
453 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
454 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
455 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
457 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
458 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
460 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
461 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
463 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
465 ** Improved robustness
467 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
468 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
469 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
471 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
472 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
475 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
476 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
478 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
479 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
481 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
482 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
484 ** Changes in behavior
486 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
487 where the two are distinct.
489 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
490 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
491 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
492 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
493 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
494 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
495 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
496 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
497 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
498 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
499 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
500 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
501 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
502 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
503 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
504 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
505 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
507 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
508 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
509 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
511 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
512 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
513 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
514 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
517 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
518 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
522 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
523 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
524 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
525 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
527 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
528 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
529 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
531 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
532 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
533 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
534 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
535 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
538 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
539 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
541 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
542 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
543 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
544 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
546 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
547 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
548 successful and the output is easier to parse.
550 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
551 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
552 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
553 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
555 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
556 and sticky) with the -m option.
558 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
559 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
560 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
561 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
562 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
564 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
565 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
567 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
571 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
572 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
573 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
574 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
576 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
578 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
580 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
581 silently ignoring one of them.
583 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
584 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
585 containing this change was 5.92.
587 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
588 automatically newline terminated.
590 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
591 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
592 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
593 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
596 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
597 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
598 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
601 ** Scheduled for removal
603 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
604 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
606 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
607 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
608 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
609 command to unlink a directory.
611 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
612 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
613 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
614 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
618 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
619 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
620 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
621 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
622 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
623 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
627 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
628 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
630 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
632 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
633 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
634 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
636 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
637 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
640 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
641 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
643 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
644 list directories before files.
646 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
647 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
648 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
649 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
652 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
654 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
656 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
657 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
658 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
660 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
661 list of NUL-terminated file names.
665 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
666 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
667 usually printing nothing.
669 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
671 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
672 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
673 them with hard-linked directories.
675 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
676 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
677 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
679 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
680 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
681 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
683 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
686 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
687 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
689 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
690 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
692 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
693 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
695 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
696 all command-line arguments.
698 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
700 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
702 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
703 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
705 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
707 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
708 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
709 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
710 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
711 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
713 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
714 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
716 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
717 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
718 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
719 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
721 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
723 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
727 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
728 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
730 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
731 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
733 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
734 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
736 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
737 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
739 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
740 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
742 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
744 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
745 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
746 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
749 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
751 ** Build-related bug fixes
753 installing .mo files would fail
756 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
760 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
762 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
765 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
769 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
770 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
774 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
776 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
777 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
779 ** Deprecated options
781 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
782 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
784 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
788 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
790 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
791 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
792 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
793 conforming to older POSIX versions.
795 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
798 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
804 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
809 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
811 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
813 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
814 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
815 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
817 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
818 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
819 problematic usages. These include:
821 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
822 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
823 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
824 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
825 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
826 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
827 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
828 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
829 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
831 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
832 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
834 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
835 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
836 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
837 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
839 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
840 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
841 between binary and text files.
843 The following programs now always use text input/output:
847 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
851 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
852 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
855 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
857 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
858 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
860 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
861 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
862 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
864 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
866 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
868 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
869 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
870 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
874 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
876 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
877 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
879 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
880 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
881 blocks until F contains N blocks.
885 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
886 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
890 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
891 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
892 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
896 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
897 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
901 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
903 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
905 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
909 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
910 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
911 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
913 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
914 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
915 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
916 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
917 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
919 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
923 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
924 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
925 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
927 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
929 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
930 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
931 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
932 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
934 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
936 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
937 rather than silently wrapping around.
939 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
940 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
942 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
943 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
945 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
946 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
947 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
950 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
952 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
954 ** Improved robustness
956 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
957 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
958 no matter how large the result.
960 ** Improved portability
962 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
963 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
965 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
967 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
968 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
969 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
971 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
972 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
976 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
977 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
979 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
981 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
982 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
983 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
984 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
986 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
987 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
989 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
990 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
991 categories if not specified by dircolors.
993 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
995 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
996 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
998 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
999 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1001 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1003 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1004 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1006 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1007 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1009 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1010 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1011 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1013 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1015 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1017 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1021 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1023 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1024 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1025 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1027 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1028 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1030 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1031 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1032 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1034 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1035 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1037 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1038 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1039 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1040 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1042 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1043 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1045 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1046 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1047 the file system does not support it.
1049 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1051 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1052 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1054 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1056 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1057 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1059 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1060 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1061 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1062 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1064 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1065 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1068 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1069 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1070 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1071 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1073 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1074 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1075 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1076 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1078 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1079 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1081 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1083 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1084 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1085 reporting incorrect results.
1089 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1090 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1092 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1095 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1097 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1098 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1100 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1101 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1103 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1106 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1107 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1108 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1109 the file name does not look like a page range.
1111 printf has several changes:
1113 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1114 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1116 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1117 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1118 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1120 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1121 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1124 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1125 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1127 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1128 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1130 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1132 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1133 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1135 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1137 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1139 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1140 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1141 when first encountering the directory.
1145 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1146 output; POSIX requires this.
1148 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1149 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1151 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1153 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1154 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1156 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1157 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1159 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1160 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1161 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1162 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1163 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1164 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1165 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1167 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1168 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1169 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1171 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1172 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1174 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1176 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1178 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1179 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1180 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1181 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1183 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1187 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1188 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1189 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1190 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1191 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1193 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1194 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1195 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1197 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1198 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1200 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1201 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1203 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1204 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1205 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1206 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1207 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1209 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1210 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1212 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1213 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1215 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1217 nocreat do not create the output file
1218 excl fail if the output file already exists
1219 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1220 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1222 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1224 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1225 direct use direct I/O for data
1226 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1227 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1228 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1229 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1230 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1232 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1234 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1235 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1238 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1239 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1240 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1241 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1242 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1243 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1245 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1246 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1248 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1251 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1253 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1255 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1256 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1258 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1259 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1260 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1262 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1263 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1264 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1266 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1268 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1269 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1271 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1272 for compatibility with bash.
1274 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1276 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1277 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1278 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1279 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1281 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1282 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1284 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1285 ls supports TABSIZE.
1286 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1287 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1288 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1290 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1293 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1295 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1296 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1297 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1298 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1299 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1300 an offset, not as a file name.
1302 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1303 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1305 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1306 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1308 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1309 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1311 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1312 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1313 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1315 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1316 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1318 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1319 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1323 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1325 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1327 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1331 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1332 or more arguments between partitions.
1334 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1335 holes in the destination.
1337 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1338 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1339 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1340 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1341 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1342 terminates immediately.
1344 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1346 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1348 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1349 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1350 not the empty string.
1352 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1353 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1357 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1358 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1359 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1362 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1369 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1373 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1374 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1376 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1377 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1379 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1380 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1381 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1384 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1388 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1389 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1391 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1392 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1394 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1395 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1396 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1398 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1400 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1403 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1405 ** Configuration option
1407 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1408 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1412 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1413 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1417 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1418 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1419 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1422 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1423 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1424 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1425 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1426 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1427 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1428 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1431 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1435 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1436 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1437 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1439 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1440 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1442 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1444 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1445 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1446 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1447 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1449 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1451 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1452 not just the ones that reference directories
1454 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1455 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1457 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1458 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1459 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1461 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1462 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1463 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1464 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1465 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1466 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1468 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1473 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1474 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1476 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1478 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1480 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1482 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1483 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1485 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1486 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1488 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1490 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1494 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1496 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1498 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1499 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1500 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1501 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1502 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1504 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1505 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1507 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1508 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1510 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1511 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1513 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1514 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1515 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1519 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1520 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1521 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1522 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1523 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1524 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1525 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1526 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1527 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1528 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1529 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1530 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1531 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1532 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1534 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1536 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1537 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1539 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1541 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1543 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1544 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1546 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1548 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1549 without a trailing newline.
1551 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1552 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1554 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1557 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1561 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1563 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1565 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1566 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1567 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1568 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1570 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1572 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1573 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1574 be printed without leading spaces.
1576 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1577 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1582 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1583 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1584 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1586 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1588 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1589 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1591 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1592 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1594 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1595 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1597 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1599 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1601 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1603 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1604 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1606 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1608 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1610 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1611 byte offsets are specified.
1614 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1617 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1620 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1621 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1622 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1623 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1624 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1625 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1626 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1627 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1628 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1629 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1630 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1631 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1632 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1633 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1634 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1635 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1636 directory where M has write access.
1637 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1638 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1639 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1642 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1643 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1644 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1645 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1646 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1647 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1648 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1649 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1650 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1651 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1652 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1653 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1654 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1655 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1656 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1657 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1658 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1659 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1660 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1661 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1662 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1663 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1664 appeared one additional time.
1666 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1667 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1668 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1669 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1672 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1673 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1674 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1675 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1676 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1677 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1678 if there were more than 338.
1680 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1681 - false --help now exits nonzero
1684 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1685 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1686 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1687 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1690 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1691 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1692 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1693 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1694 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1697 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1698 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1699 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1700 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1701 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1702 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1703 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1706 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1707 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1708 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1709 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1710 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1711 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1713 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1714 under certain unusual conditions
1715 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1716 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1719 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1720 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1721 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1722 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1723 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1724 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1725 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1726 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1727 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1728 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1729 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1730 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1731 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1732 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1733 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1734 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1737 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1738 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1741 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1742 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1743 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1744 involving hard-linked directories
1745 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1746 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1747 character-special and block files
1750 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1751 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1752 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1753 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1754 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1755 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1756 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1757 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1758 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1760 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1761 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1762 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1763 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1764 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1765 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1766 specified on the command line.
1767 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1768 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1769 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1770 the first file untouched.
1771 * readlink: new program
1772 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1773 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1774 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1775 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1776 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1777 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1780 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1781 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1782 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1783 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1784 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1785 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1786 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1787 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1788 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1789 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1790 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1791 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1793 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1794 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1795 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1797 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1798 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1799 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1800 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1801 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1802 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1803 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1804 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1807 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1808 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1811 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1812 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1813 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1814 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1815 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1816 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1817 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1820 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1821 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1823 ========================================================================
1824 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1825 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1828 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1830 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1831 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1832 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1833 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1834 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1835 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1836 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1837 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1838 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1839 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1840 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1841 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1843 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1844 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1845 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1846 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1848 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1851 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1853 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1854 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1855 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1856 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1857 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1858 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1859 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1862 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1863 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1864 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1865 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1866 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1867 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1868 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1869 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1870 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1871 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1872 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1873 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1874 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1875 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1876 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1877 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1879 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1880 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1882 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1883 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1884 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1885 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1886 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1887 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1889 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1890 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1891 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1892 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1893 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1894 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1895 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1897 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1898 the source files in the following example:
1899 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1900 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1901 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1902 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1903 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1904 links between source files with --preserve=links
1905 * cp accepts new options:
1906 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1907 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1908 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1909 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1910 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1911 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1912 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1913 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1914 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1916 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1917 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1918 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1919 even though it's older than dest.
1920 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1921 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1922 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1923 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1924 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1926 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1927 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1928 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1929 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1930 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1931 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1932 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1934 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1935 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1936 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1938 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1939 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1940 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1941 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1942 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1943 This is the default.
1945 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1946 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1947 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1948 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1949 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1951 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1954 ========================================================================
1955 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1956 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1959 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1960 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1962 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1963 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1964 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1965 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1966 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1968 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1969 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1970 that specifies a non-directory
1973 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1974 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1975 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1976 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1977 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1978 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1979 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1980 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1981 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1982 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1983 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1984 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1985 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1986 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1987 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1988 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1989 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1990 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1991 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1992 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1993 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1994 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1995 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1996 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1998 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1999 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2000 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2002 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2004 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2005 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2007 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2008 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2009 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2010 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2011 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2013 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2014 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2015 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2016 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2017 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2019 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2021 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2022 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2023 * still more portability fixes
2024 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2025 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2027 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2029 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2031 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2033 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2034 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2035 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2036 there is any time remaining
2037 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2039 ========================================================================
2040 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2041 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2043 This package began as the union of the following:
2044 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2046 ========================================================================
2048 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2051 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2052 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2053 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2054 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2055 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2056 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.