1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2004-03-17) [unstable]
7 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
9 chgrp and chown no longer affect symbolic links by default.
10 Now, they operate on whatever a symbolic points to, instead.
11 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
13 chown --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
14 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
16 rm no longer required read access to the current directory.
18 For some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
19 when first encountering a directory, `rm -r' would mistakenly fail
20 to remove files under that directory.
22 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
23 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
25 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
26 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
28 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1
30 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
31 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
32 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
33 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
37 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
38 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
39 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
40 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
41 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
43 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
44 is longer than PATH_MAX.
46 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
47 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
48 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
49 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
50 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
52 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
54 nocreat do not create the output file
55 excl fail if the output file already exists
56 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
57 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
59 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
61 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
62 direct use direct I/O for data
63 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
64 sync likewise, but also for metadata
65 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
66 nofollow do not follow symlinks
68 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
70 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
71 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
74 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
75 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
76 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
77 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
78 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
79 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
81 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
82 list of NUL-terminated file names.
84 `date -d' and `touch -d' now accept integer counts of seconds since
85 1970 when prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents
86 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
88 `date -d', `date -f' and `touch -d' now handle fractional time
89 stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
91 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
92 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
94 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
95 for compatibility with bash.
98 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
102 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
103 or more arguments between partitions.
105 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
106 holes in the destination.
108 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
109 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
110 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
111 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
112 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
113 terminates immediately.
115 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
117 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
119 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
120 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
121 not the empty string.
123 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
124 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
128 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
129 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
130 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
133 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
140 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
144 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
145 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
147 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
148 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
150 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
151 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
152 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
155 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
159 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
160 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
162 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
163 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
165 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
166 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
167 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
169 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
171 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
174 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
176 ** Configuration option
178 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
179 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
183 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
184 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
188 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
189 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
190 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
193 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
194 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
195 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
196 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
197 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
198 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
201 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
205 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
206 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
207 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
209 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
210 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
212 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
214 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
215 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
216 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
217 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
219 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
221 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
222 not just the ones that reference directories
224 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
225 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
227 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
228 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
229 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
231 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
232 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
233 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
234 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
235 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
236 ragged when a datum was too wide.
238 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
243 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
244 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
246 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
248 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
250 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
252 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
253 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
255 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
256 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
258 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
260 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
264 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
266 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
268 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
269 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
270 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
271 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
272 resolution is the best we can do right now.
274 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
275 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
277 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
278 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
280 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
281 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
283 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
284 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
285 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
289 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
290 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
291 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
292 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
293 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
294 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
295 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
296 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
297 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
298 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
299 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
300 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
301 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
302 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
304 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
306 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
307 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
309 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
311 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
313 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
314 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
316 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
318 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
319 without a trailing newline.
321 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
322 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
324 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
327 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
331 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
333 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
335 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
336 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
337 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
338 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
340 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
342 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
343 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
344 be printed without leading spaces.
346 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
347 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
352 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
353 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
354 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
356 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
358 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
359 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
361 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
362 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
364 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
365 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
367 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
369 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
371 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
373 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
374 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
376 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
378 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
380 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
381 byte offsets are specified.
384 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
387 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
390 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
391 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
392 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
393 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
394 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
395 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
396 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
397 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
398 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
399 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
400 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
401 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
402 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
403 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
404 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
405 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
406 directory where M has write access.
407 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
408 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
409 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
412 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
413 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
414 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
415 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
416 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
417 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
418 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
419 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
420 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
421 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
422 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
423 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
424 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
425 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
426 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
427 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
428 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
429 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
430 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
431 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
432 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
433 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
434 appeared one additional time.
436 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
437 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
438 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
439 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
442 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
443 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
444 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
445 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
446 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
447 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
448 if there were more than 338.
450 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
451 - false --help now exits nonzero
454 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
455 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
456 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
457 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
460 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
461 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
462 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
463 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
464 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
467 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
468 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
469 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
470 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
471 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
472 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
473 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
476 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
477 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
478 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
479 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
480 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
481 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
483 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
484 under certain unusual conditions
485 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
486 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
489 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
490 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
491 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
492 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
493 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
494 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
495 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
496 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
497 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
498 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
499 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
500 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
501 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
502 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
503 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
504 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
507 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
508 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
511 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
512 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
513 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
514 involving hard-linked directories
515 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
516 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
517 character-special and block files
520 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
521 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
522 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
523 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
524 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
525 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
526 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
527 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
528 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
530 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
531 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
532 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
533 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
534 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
535 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
536 specified on the command line.
537 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
538 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
539 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
540 the first file untouched.
541 * readlink: new program
542 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
543 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
544 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
545 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
546 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
547 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
550 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
551 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
552 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
553 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
554 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
555 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
556 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
557 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
558 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
559 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
560 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
561 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
563 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
564 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
565 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
567 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
568 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
569 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
570 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
571 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
572 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
573 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
574 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
577 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
578 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
581 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
582 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
583 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
584 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
585 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
586 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
587 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
590 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
591 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
593 ========================================================================
594 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
595 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
598 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
600 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
601 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
602 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
603 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
604 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
605 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
606 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
607 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
608 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
609 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
610 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
611 The old options will continue to work for a while.
613 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
614 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
615 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
616 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
618 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
621 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
623 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
624 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
625 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
626 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
627 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
628 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
629 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
632 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
633 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
634 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
635 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
636 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
637 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
638 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
639 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
640 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
641 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
642 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
643 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
644 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
645 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
646 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
647 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
649 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
650 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
652 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
653 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
654 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
655 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
656 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
657 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
659 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
660 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
661 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
662 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
663 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
664 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
665 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
667 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
668 the source files in the following example:
669 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
670 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
671 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
672 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
673 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
674 links between source files with --preserve=links
675 * cp accepts new options:
676 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
677 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
678 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
679 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
680 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
681 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
682 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
683 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
684 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
686 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
687 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
688 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
689 even though it's older than dest.
690 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
691 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
692 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
693 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
694 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
696 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
697 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
698 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
699 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
700 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
701 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
702 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
704 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
705 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
706 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
708 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
709 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
710 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
711 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
712 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
715 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
716 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
717 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
718 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
719 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
721 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
724 ========================================================================
725 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
726 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
729 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
730 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
732 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
733 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
734 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
735 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
736 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
738 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
739 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
740 that specifies a non-directory
743 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
744 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
745 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
746 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
747 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
748 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
749 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
750 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
751 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
752 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
753 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
754 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
755 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
756 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
757 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
758 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
759 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
760 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
761 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
762 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
763 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
764 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
765 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
766 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
768 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
769 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
770 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
772 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
774 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
775 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
777 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
778 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
779 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
780 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
781 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
783 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
784 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
785 required support; from Bruno Haible.
786 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
787 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
789 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
791 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
792 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
793 * still more portability fixes
794 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
795 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
797 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
799 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
801 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
803 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
804 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
805 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
806 there is any time remaining
807 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
809 ========================================================================
810 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
811 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
813 This package began as the union of the following:
814 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
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