1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2004-03-17) [unstable]
7 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
8 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
10 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
12 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
14 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
16 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
17 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic points to, instead.
18 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
20 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
21 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
23 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
24 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
25 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
27 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
28 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
30 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
31 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
32 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
33 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
35 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
36 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
37 the file system does not support it.
39 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
41 For some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
42 when first encountering a directory, `rm -r' would mistakenly fail
43 to remove files under that directory.
45 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
46 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
48 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
49 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
51 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1
53 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
54 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
55 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
56 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
58 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
62 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
63 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
64 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
65 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
66 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
68 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
69 is longer than PATH_MAX.
71 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
72 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
73 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
74 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
75 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
77 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
79 nocreat do not create the output file
80 excl fail if the output file already exists
81 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
82 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
84 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
86 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
87 direct use direct I/O for data
88 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
89 sync likewise, but also for metadata
90 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
91 nofollow do not follow symlinks
93 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
95 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
96 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
99 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
100 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
101 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
102 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
103 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
104 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
106 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
107 list of NUL-terminated file names.
109 `date -d' and `touch -d' now accept integer counts of seconds since
110 1970 when prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents
111 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
113 `date -d', `date -f' and `touch -d' now handle fractional time
114 stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
116 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
117 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
119 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
120 for compatibility with bash.
122 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
123 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
125 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
127 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
128 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
129 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
131 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
134 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
138 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
139 or more arguments between partitions.
141 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
142 holes in the destination.
144 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
145 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
146 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
147 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
148 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
149 terminates immediately.
151 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
153 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
155 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
156 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
157 not the empty string.
159 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
160 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
164 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
165 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
166 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
169 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
176 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
180 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
181 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
183 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
184 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
186 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
187 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
188 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
191 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
195 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
196 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
198 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
199 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
201 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
202 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
203 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
205 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
207 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
210 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
212 ** Configuration option
214 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
215 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
219 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
220 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
224 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
225 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
226 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
229 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
230 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
231 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
232 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
233 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
234 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
237 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
241 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
242 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
243 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
245 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
246 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
248 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
250 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
251 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
252 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
253 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
255 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
257 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
258 not just the ones that reference directories
260 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
261 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
263 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
264 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
265 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
267 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
268 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
269 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
270 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
271 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
272 ragged when a datum was too wide.
274 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
279 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
280 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
282 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
284 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
286 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
288 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
289 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
291 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
292 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
294 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
296 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
300 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
302 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
304 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
305 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
306 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
307 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
308 resolution is the best we can do right now.
310 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
311 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
313 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
314 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
316 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
317 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
319 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
320 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
321 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
325 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
326 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
327 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
328 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
329 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
330 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
331 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
332 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
333 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
334 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
335 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
336 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
337 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
338 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
340 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
342 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
343 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
345 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
347 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
349 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
350 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
352 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
354 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
355 without a trailing newline.
357 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
358 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
360 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
363 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
367 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
369 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
371 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
372 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
373 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
374 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
376 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
378 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
379 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
380 be printed without leading spaces.
382 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
383 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
388 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
389 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
390 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
392 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
394 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
395 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
397 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
398 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
400 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
401 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
403 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
405 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
407 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
409 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
410 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
412 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
414 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
416 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
417 byte offsets are specified.
420 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
423 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
426 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
427 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
428 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
429 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
430 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
431 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
432 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
433 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
434 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
435 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
436 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
437 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
438 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
439 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
440 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
441 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
442 directory where M has write access.
443 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
444 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
445 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
448 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
449 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
450 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
451 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
452 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
453 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
454 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
455 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
456 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
457 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
458 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
459 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
460 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
461 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
462 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
463 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
464 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
465 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
466 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
467 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
468 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
469 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
470 appeared one additional time.
472 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
473 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
474 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
475 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
478 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
479 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
480 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
481 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
482 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
483 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
484 if there were more than 338.
486 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
487 - false --help now exits nonzero
490 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
491 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
492 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
493 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
496 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
497 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
498 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
499 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
500 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
503 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
504 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
505 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
506 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
507 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
508 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
509 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
512 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
513 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
514 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
515 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
516 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
517 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
519 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
520 under certain unusual conditions
521 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
522 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
525 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
526 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
527 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
528 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
529 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
530 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
531 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
532 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
533 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
534 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
535 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
536 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
537 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
538 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
539 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
540 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
543 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
544 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
547 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
548 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
549 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
550 involving hard-linked directories
551 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
552 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
553 character-special and block files
556 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
557 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
558 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
559 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
560 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
561 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
562 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
563 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
564 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
566 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
567 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
568 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
569 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
570 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
571 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
572 specified on the command line.
573 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
574 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
575 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
576 the first file untouched.
577 * readlink: new program
578 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
579 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
580 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
581 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
582 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
583 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
586 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
587 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
588 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
589 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
590 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
591 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
592 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
593 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
594 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
595 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
596 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
597 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
599 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
600 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
601 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
603 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
604 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
605 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
606 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
607 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
608 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
609 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
610 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
613 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
614 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
617 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
618 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
619 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
620 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
621 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
622 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
623 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
626 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
627 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
629 ========================================================================
630 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
631 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
634 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
636 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
637 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
638 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
639 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
640 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
641 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
642 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
643 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
644 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
645 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
646 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
647 The old options will continue to work for a while.
649 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
650 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
651 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
652 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
654 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
657 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
659 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
660 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
661 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
662 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
663 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
664 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
665 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
668 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
669 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
670 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
671 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
672 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
673 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
674 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
675 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
676 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
677 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
678 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
679 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
680 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
681 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
682 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
683 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
685 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
686 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
688 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
689 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
690 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
691 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
692 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
693 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
695 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
696 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
697 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
698 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
699 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
700 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
701 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
703 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
704 the source files in the following example:
705 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
706 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
707 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
708 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
709 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
710 links between source files with --preserve=links
711 * cp accepts new options:
712 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
713 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
714 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
715 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
716 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
717 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
718 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
719 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
720 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
722 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
723 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
724 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
725 even though it's older than dest.
726 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
727 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
728 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
729 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
730 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
732 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
733 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
734 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
735 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
736 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
737 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
738 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
740 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
741 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
742 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
744 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
745 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
746 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
747 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
748 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
751 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
752 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
753 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
754 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
755 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
757 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
760 ========================================================================
761 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
762 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
765 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
766 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
768 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
769 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
770 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
771 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
772 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
774 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
775 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
776 that specifies a non-directory
779 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
780 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
781 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
782 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
783 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
784 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
785 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
786 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
787 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
788 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
789 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
790 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
791 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
792 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
793 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
794 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
795 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
796 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
797 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
798 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
799 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
800 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
801 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
802 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
804 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
805 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
806 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
808 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
810 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
811 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
813 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
814 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
815 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
816 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
817 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
819 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
820 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
821 required support; from Bruno Haible.
822 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
823 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
825 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
827 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
828 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
829 * still more portability fixes
830 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
831 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
833 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
835 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
837 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
839 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
840 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
841 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
842 there is any time remaining
843 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
845 ========================================================================
846 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
847 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
849 This package began as the union of the following:
850 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
projects / platform / upstream / coreutils.git / blob