1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.?? (2008-??-??) [stable]
7 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
9 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
10 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
11 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
12 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
14 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
15 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
17 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
18 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
20 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
21 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
23 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
24 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
26 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
27 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
28 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
30 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
31 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
33 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
34 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
35 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
36 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
38 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
39 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
41 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
42 in more cases when a directory is empty.
44 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
45 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
46 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
50 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
51 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
53 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
54 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
55 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
56 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
60 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
61 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
63 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
65 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
69 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
70 which have negative errno values.
74 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
78 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
82 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
83 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
86 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
90 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
91 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
92 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
94 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
95 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
96 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
97 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
101 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
102 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
103 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
104 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
107 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
111 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
113 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
114 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
115 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
118 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
122 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
123 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
125 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
127 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
129 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
131 ** Programs no longer installed by default
135 ** Changes in behavior
137 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
138 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
140 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
141 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
143 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
144 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
145 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
149 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
150 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
151 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
152 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
153 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
154 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
155 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
156 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
157 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
158 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
159 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
161 The following commands and options now support the standard size
162 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
163 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
166 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
169 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
170 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
171 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
173 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
174 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
175 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
180 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
181 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
182 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
183 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
185 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
186 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
187 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
188 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
189 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
190 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
191 of "make check" fail.
193 ** Remove deprecated options
195 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
196 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
197 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
198 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
199 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
201 ** Improved robustness
203 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
204 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
205 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
206 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
207 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
208 loss of the contents of a/f.
210 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
211 in its 35-colon command-line argument
215 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
216 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
217 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
219 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
220 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
221 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
222 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
224 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
225 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
226 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
227 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
228 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
229 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
230 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
231 destination is a symlink.
233 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
235 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
236 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
238 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
239 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
241 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
243 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
244 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
246 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
247 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
249 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
252 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
253 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
255 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
256 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
258 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
259 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
260 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
261 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
263 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
264 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
265 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
267 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
268 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
269 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
271 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
272 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
273 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
274 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
276 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
277 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
278 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
280 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
281 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
283 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
284 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
286 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
288 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
289 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
290 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
292 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
293 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
295 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
296 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
298 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
299 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
301 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
302 [present in the original version]
305 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
309 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
311 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
312 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
313 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
315 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
316 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
318 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
322 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
323 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
325 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
326 support but with insufficient /proc support.
328 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
329 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
331 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
332 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
333 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
334 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
335 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
336 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
338 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
339 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
342 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
343 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
345 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
348 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
349 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
350 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
352 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
353 directory is unreadable.
355 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
356 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
357 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
359 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
360 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
361 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
362 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
363 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
366 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
367 Before it would print nothing.
369 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
371 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
372 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
373 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
374 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
375 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
376 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
377 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
378 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
380 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
384 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
385 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
386 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
388 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
389 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
390 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
391 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
394 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
398 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
399 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
400 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
401 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
402 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
403 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
404 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
406 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
407 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
408 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
409 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
410 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
411 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
412 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
413 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
415 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
416 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
417 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
420 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
424 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
425 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
427 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
428 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
429 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
431 ** Improved robustness
433 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
434 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
435 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
438 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
442 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
443 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
444 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
445 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
446 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
448 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
452 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
455 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
459 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
460 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
461 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
462 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
464 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
465 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
467 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
468 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
469 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
472 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
474 ** Improved robustness
476 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
477 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
479 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
480 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
481 or NFS-mounted partition.
483 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
484 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
488 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
489 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
490 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
491 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
492 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
493 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
495 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
496 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
498 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
499 or neglect to report file removal.
501 For the "groups" command:
503 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
504 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
506 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
508 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
510 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
514 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
515 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
518 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
520 ** Changes in behavior
522 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
523 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
524 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
525 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
527 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
528 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
529 a final `./' or `../' component.
531 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
532 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
535 ** Infrastructure changes
537 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
538 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
539 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
540 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
544 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
547 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
548 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
549 dirent.d_type support.
551 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
552 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
554 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
555 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
556 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
557 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
560 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
562 ** Changes in behavior
564 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
568 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
569 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
573 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
574 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
575 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
577 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
578 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
580 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
581 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
583 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
585 ** Improved robustness
587 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
588 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
589 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
591 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
592 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
595 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
596 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
598 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
599 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
601 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
602 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
604 ** Changes in behavior
606 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
607 where the two are distinct.
609 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
610 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
611 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
612 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
613 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
614 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
615 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
616 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
617 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
618 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
619 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
620 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
621 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
622 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
623 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
624 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
625 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
627 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
628 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
629 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
631 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
632 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
633 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
634 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
637 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
638 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
642 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
643 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
644 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
645 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
647 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
648 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
649 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
651 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
652 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
653 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
654 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
655 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
658 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
659 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
661 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
662 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
663 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
664 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
666 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
667 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
668 successful and the output is easier to parse.
670 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
671 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
672 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
673 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
675 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
676 and sticky) with the -m option.
678 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
679 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
680 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
681 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
682 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
684 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
685 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
687 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
691 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
692 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
693 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
694 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
696 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
698 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
700 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
701 silently ignoring one of them.
703 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
704 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
705 containing this change was 5.92.
707 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
708 automatically newline terminated.
710 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
711 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
712 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
713 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
716 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
717 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
718 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
721 ** Scheduled for removal
723 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
724 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
726 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
727 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
728 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
729 command to unlink a directory.
731 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
732 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
733 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
734 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
738 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
739 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
740 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
741 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
742 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
743 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
747 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
748 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
750 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
752 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
753 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
754 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
756 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
757 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
760 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
761 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
763 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
764 list directories before files.
766 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
767 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
768 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
769 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
772 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
774 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
776 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
777 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
778 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
780 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
781 list of NUL-terminated file names.
785 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
786 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
787 usually printing nothing.
789 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
791 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
792 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
793 them with hard-linked directories.
795 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
796 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
797 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
799 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
800 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
801 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
803 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
806 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
807 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
809 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
810 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
812 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
813 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
815 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
816 all command-line arguments.
818 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
820 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
822 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
823 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
825 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
827 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
828 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
829 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
830 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
831 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
833 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
834 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
836 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
837 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
838 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
839 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
841 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
843 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
847 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
848 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
850 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
851 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
853 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
854 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
856 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
857 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
859 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
860 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
862 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
864 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
865 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
866 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
869 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
871 ** Build-related bug fixes
873 installing .mo files would fail
876 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
880 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
882 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
885 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
889 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
890 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
894 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
896 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
897 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
899 ** Deprecated options
901 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
902 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
904 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
908 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
910 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
911 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
912 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
913 conforming to older POSIX versions.
915 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
918 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
924 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
929 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
931 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
933 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
934 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
935 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
937 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
938 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
939 problematic usages. These include:
941 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
942 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
943 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
944 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
945 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
946 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
947 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
948 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
949 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
951 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
952 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
954 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
955 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
956 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
957 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
959 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
960 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
961 between binary and text files.
963 The following programs now always use text input/output:
967 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
971 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
972 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
975 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
977 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
978 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
980 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
981 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
982 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
984 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
986 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
988 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
989 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
990 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
994 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
996 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
997 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
999 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1000 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1001 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1005 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1006 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1010 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1011 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1012 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1016 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1017 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1021 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1023 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1025 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1029 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1030 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1031 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1033 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1034 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1035 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1036 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1037 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1039 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1043 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1044 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1045 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1047 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1049 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1050 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1051 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1052 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1054 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1056 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1057 rather than silently wrapping around.
1059 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1060 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1062 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1063 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1065 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1066 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1067 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1068 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1070 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1072 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1074 ** Improved robustness
1076 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1077 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1078 no matter how large the result.
1080 ** Improved portability
1082 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1083 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1085 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1087 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1088 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1089 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1091 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1092 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1096 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1097 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1099 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1101 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1102 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1103 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1104 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1106 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1107 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1109 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1110 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1111 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1113 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1115 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1116 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1118 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1119 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1121 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1123 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1124 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1126 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1127 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1129 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1130 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1131 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1133 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1135 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1137 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1141 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1143 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1144 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1145 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1147 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1148 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1150 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1151 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1152 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1154 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1155 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1157 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1158 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1159 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1160 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1162 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1163 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1165 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1166 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1167 the file system does not support it.
1169 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1171 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1172 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1174 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1176 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1177 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1179 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1180 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1181 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1182 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1184 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1185 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1188 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1189 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1190 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1191 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1193 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1194 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1195 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1196 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1198 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1199 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1201 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1203 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1204 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1205 reporting incorrect results.
1209 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1210 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1212 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1215 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1217 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1218 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1220 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1221 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1223 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1226 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1227 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1228 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1229 the file name does not look like a page range.
1231 printf has several changes:
1233 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1234 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1236 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1237 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1238 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1240 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1241 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1244 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1245 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1247 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1248 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1250 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1252 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1253 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1255 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1257 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1259 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1260 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1261 when first encountering the directory.
1265 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1266 output; POSIX requires this.
1268 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1269 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1271 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1273 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1274 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1276 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1277 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1279 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1280 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1281 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1282 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1283 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1284 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1285 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1287 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1288 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1289 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1291 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1292 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1294 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1296 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1298 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1299 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1300 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1301 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1303 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1307 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1308 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1309 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1310 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1311 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1313 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1314 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1315 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1317 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1318 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1320 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1321 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1323 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1324 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1325 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1326 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1327 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1329 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1330 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1332 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1333 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1335 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1337 nocreat do not create the output file
1338 excl fail if the output file already exists
1339 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1340 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1342 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1344 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1345 direct use direct I/O for data
1346 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1347 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1348 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1349 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1350 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1352 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1354 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1355 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1358 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1359 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1360 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1361 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1362 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1363 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1365 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1366 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1368 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1371 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1373 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1375 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1376 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1378 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1379 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1380 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1382 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1383 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1384 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1386 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1388 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1389 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1391 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1392 for compatibility with bash.
1394 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1396 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1397 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1398 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1399 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1401 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1402 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1404 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1405 ls supports TABSIZE.
1406 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1407 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1408 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1410 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1413 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1415 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1416 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1417 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1418 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1419 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1420 an offset, not as a file name.
1422 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1423 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1425 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1426 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1428 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1429 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1431 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1432 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1433 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1435 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1436 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1438 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1439 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1443 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1445 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1447 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1451 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1452 or more arguments between partitions.
1454 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1455 holes in the destination.
1457 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1458 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1459 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1460 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1461 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1462 terminates immediately.
1464 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1466 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1468 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1469 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1470 not the empty string.
1472 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1473 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1477 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1478 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1479 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1482 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1489 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1493 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1494 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1496 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1497 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1499 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1500 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1501 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1504 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1508 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1509 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1511 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1512 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1514 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1515 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1516 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1518 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1520 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1523 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1525 ** Configuration option
1527 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1528 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1532 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1533 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1537 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1538 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1539 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1542 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1543 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1544 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1545 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1546 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1547 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1548 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1551 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1555 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1556 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1557 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1559 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1560 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1562 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1564 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1565 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1566 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1567 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1569 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1571 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1572 not just the ones that reference directories
1574 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1575 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1577 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1578 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1579 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1581 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1582 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1583 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1584 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1585 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1586 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1588 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1593 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1594 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1596 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1598 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1600 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1602 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1603 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1605 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1606 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1608 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1610 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1614 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1616 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1618 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1619 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1620 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1621 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1622 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1624 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1625 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1627 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1628 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1630 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1631 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1633 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1634 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1635 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1639 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1640 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1641 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1642 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1643 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1644 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1645 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1646 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1647 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1648 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1649 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1650 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1651 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1652 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1654 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1656 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1657 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1659 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1661 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1663 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1664 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1666 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1668 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1669 without a trailing newline.
1671 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1672 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1674 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1677 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1681 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1683 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1685 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1686 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1687 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1688 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1690 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1692 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1693 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1694 be printed without leading spaces.
1696 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1697 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1702 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1703 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1704 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1706 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1708 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1709 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1711 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1712 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1714 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1715 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1717 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1719 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1721 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1723 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1724 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1726 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1728 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1730 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1731 byte offsets are specified.
1734 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1737 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1740 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1741 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1742 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1743 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1744 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1745 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1746 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1747 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1748 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1749 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1750 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1751 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1752 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1753 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1754 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1755 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1756 directory where M has write access.
1757 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1758 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1759 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1762 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1763 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1764 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1765 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1766 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1767 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1768 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1769 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1770 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1771 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1772 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1773 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1774 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1775 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1776 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1777 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1778 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1779 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1780 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1781 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1782 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1783 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1784 appeared one additional time.
1786 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1787 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1788 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1789 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1792 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1793 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1794 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1795 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1796 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1797 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1798 if there were more than 338.
1800 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1801 - false --help now exits nonzero
1804 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1805 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1806 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1807 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1810 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1811 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1812 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1813 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1814 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1817 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1818 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1819 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1820 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1821 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1822 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1823 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1826 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1827 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1828 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1829 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1830 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1831 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1833 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1834 under certain unusual conditions
1835 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1836 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1839 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1840 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1841 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1842 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1843 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1844 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1845 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1846 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1847 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1848 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1849 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1850 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1851 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1852 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1853 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1854 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1857 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1858 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1861 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1862 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1863 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1864 involving hard-linked directories
1865 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1866 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1867 character-special and block files
1870 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1871 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1872 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1873 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1874 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1875 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1876 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1877 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1878 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1880 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1881 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1882 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1883 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1884 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1885 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1886 specified on the command line.
1887 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1888 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1889 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1890 the first file untouched.
1891 * readlink: new program
1892 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1893 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1894 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1895 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1896 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1897 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1900 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1901 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1902 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1903 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1904 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1905 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1906 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1907 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1908 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1909 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1910 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1911 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1913 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1914 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1915 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1917 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1918 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1919 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1920 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1921 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1922 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1923 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1924 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1927 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1928 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1931 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1932 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1933 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1934 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1935 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1936 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1937 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1940 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1941 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1943 ========================================================================
1944 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1945 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1948 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1950 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1951 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1952 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1953 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1954 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1955 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1956 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1957 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1958 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1959 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1960 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1961 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1963 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1964 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1965 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1966 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1968 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1971 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1973 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1974 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1975 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1976 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1977 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1978 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1979 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1982 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1983 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1984 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1985 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1986 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1987 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1988 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1989 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1990 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1991 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1992 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1993 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1994 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1995 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1996 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1997 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1999 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2000 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2002 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2003 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2004 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2005 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2006 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2007 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2009 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2010 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2011 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2012 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2013 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2014 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2015 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2017 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2018 the source files in the following example:
2019 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2020 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2021 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2022 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2023 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2024 links between source files with --preserve=links
2025 * cp accepts new options:
2026 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2027 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2028 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2029 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2030 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2031 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2032 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2033 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2034 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2036 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2037 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2038 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2039 even though it's older than dest.
2040 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2041 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2042 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2043 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2044 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2046 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2047 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2048 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2049 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2050 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2051 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2052 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2054 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2055 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2056 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2058 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2059 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2060 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2061 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2062 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2063 This is the default.
2065 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2066 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2067 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2068 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2069 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2071 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2074 ========================================================================
2075 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2076 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2079 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2080 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2082 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2083 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2084 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2085 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2086 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2088 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2089 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2090 that specifies a non-directory
2093 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2094 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2095 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2096 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2097 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2098 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2099 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2100 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2101 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2102 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2103 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2104 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2105 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2106 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2107 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2108 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2109 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2110 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2111 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2112 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2113 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2114 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2115 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2116 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2118 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2119 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2120 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2122 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2124 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2125 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2127 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2128 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2129 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2130 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2131 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2133 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2134 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2135 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2136 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2137 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2139 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2141 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2142 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2143 * still more portability fixes
2144 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2145 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2147 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2149 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2151 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2153 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2154 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2155 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2156 there is any time remaining
2157 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2159 ========================================================================
2160 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2161 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2163 This package began as the union of the following:
2164 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2166 ========================================================================
2168 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2171 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2172 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2173 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2174 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2175 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2176 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.