1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2004-03-17) [unstable]
7 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
8 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
12 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
14 nocreat do not create the output file
15 excl fail if the output file already exists
16 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
17 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
19 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
21 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
22 direct use direct I/O for data
23 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
24 sync likewise, but also for metadata
25 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
26 nofollow do not follow symlinks
28 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
30 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
31 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
34 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
35 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
36 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
37 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
38 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
39 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
41 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
42 list of NUL-terminated file names.
44 `date -d' and `touch -d' now accept integer counts of seconds since
45 1970 when prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents
46 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
48 `date -d', `date -f' and `touch -d' now handle fractional time
49 stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
51 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
52 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
55 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
59 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
60 or more arguments between partitions.
62 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
63 holes in the destination.
65 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
66 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
67 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
68 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
69 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
70 terminates immediately.
72 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
74 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
76 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
77 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
80 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
81 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
85 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
86 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
87 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
90 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
97 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
101 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
102 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
104 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
105 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
107 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
108 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
109 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
112 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
116 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
117 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
119 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
120 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
122 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
123 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
124 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
126 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
128 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
131 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
133 ** Configuration option
135 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
136 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
140 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
141 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
145 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
146 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
147 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
150 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
151 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
152 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
153 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
154 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
155 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
158 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
162 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
163 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
164 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
166 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
167 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
169 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
171 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
172 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
173 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
174 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
176 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
178 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
179 not just the ones that reference directories
181 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
182 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
184 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
185 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
186 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
188 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
189 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
190 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
191 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
192 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
193 ragged when a datum was too wide.
195 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
200 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
201 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
203 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
205 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
207 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
209 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
210 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
212 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
213 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
215 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
217 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
221 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
223 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
225 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
226 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
227 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
228 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
229 resolution is the best we can do right now.
231 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
232 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
234 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
235 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
237 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
238 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
240 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
241 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
242 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
246 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
247 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
248 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
249 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
250 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
251 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
252 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
253 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
254 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
255 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
256 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
257 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
258 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
259 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
261 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
263 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
264 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
266 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
268 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
270 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
271 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
273 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
275 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
276 without a trailing newline.
278 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
279 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
281 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
284 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
288 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
290 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
292 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
293 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
294 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
295 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
297 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
299 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
300 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
301 be printed without leading spaces.
303 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
304 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
309 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
310 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
311 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
313 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
315 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
316 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
318 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
319 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
321 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
322 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
324 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
326 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
328 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
330 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
331 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
333 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
335 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
337 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
338 byte offsets are specified.
341 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
344 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
347 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
348 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
349 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
350 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
351 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
352 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
353 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
354 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
355 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
356 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
357 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
358 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
359 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
360 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
361 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
362 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
363 directory where M has write access.
364 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
365 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
366 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
369 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
370 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
371 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
372 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
373 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
374 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
375 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
376 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
377 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
378 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
379 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
380 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
381 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
382 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
383 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
384 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
385 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
386 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
387 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
388 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
389 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
390 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
391 appeared one additional time.
393 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
394 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
395 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
396 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
399 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
400 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
401 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
402 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
403 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
404 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
405 if there were more than 338.
407 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
408 - false --help now exits nonzero
411 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
412 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
413 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
414 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
417 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
418 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
419 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
420 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
421 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
424 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
425 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
426 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
427 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
428 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
429 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
430 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
433 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
434 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
435 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
436 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
437 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
438 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
440 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
441 under certain unusual conditions
442 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
443 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
446 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
447 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
448 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
449 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
450 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
451 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
452 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
453 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
454 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
455 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
456 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
457 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
458 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
459 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
460 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
461 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
464 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
465 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
468 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
469 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
470 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
471 involving hard-linked directories
472 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
473 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
474 character-special and block files
477 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
478 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
479 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
480 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
481 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
482 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
483 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
484 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
485 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
487 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
488 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
489 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
490 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
491 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
492 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
493 specified on the command line.
494 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
495 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
496 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
497 the first file untouched.
498 * readlink: new program
499 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
500 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
501 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
502 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
503 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
504 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
507 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
508 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
509 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
510 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
511 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
512 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
513 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
514 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
515 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
516 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
517 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
518 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
520 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
521 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
522 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
524 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
525 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
526 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
527 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
528 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
529 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
530 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
531 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
534 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
535 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
538 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
539 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
540 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
541 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
542 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
543 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
544 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
547 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
548 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
550 ========================================================================
551 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
552 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
555 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
557 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
558 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
559 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
560 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
561 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
562 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
563 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
564 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
565 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
566 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
567 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
568 The old options will continue to work for a while.
570 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
571 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
572 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
573 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
575 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
578 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
580 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
581 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
582 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
583 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
584 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
585 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
586 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
589 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
590 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
591 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
592 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
593 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
594 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
595 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
596 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
597 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
598 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
599 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
600 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
601 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
602 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
603 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
604 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
606 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
607 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
609 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
610 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
611 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
612 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
613 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
614 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
616 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
617 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
618 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
619 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
620 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
621 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
622 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
624 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
625 the source files in the following example:
626 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
627 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
628 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
629 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
630 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
631 links between source files with --preserve=links
632 * cp accepts new options:
633 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
634 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
635 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
636 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
637 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
638 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
639 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
640 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
641 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
643 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
644 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
645 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
646 even though it's older than dest.
647 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
648 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
649 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
650 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
651 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
653 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
654 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
655 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
656 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
657 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
658 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
659 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
661 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
662 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
663 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
665 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
666 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
667 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
668 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
669 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
672 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
673 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
674 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
675 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
676 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
678 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
681 ========================================================================
682 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
683 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
686 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
687 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
689 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
690 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
691 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
692 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
693 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
695 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
696 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
697 that specifies a non-directory
700 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
701 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
702 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
703 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
704 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
705 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
706 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
707 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
708 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
709 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
710 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
711 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
712 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
713 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
714 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
715 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
716 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
717 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
718 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
719 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
720 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
721 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
722 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
723 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
725 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
726 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
727 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
729 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
731 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
732 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
734 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
735 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
736 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
737 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
738 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
740 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
741 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
742 required support; from Bruno Haible.
743 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
744 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
746 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
748 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
749 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
750 * still more portability fixes
751 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
752 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
754 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
756 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
758 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
760 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
761 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
762 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
763 there is any time remaining
764 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
766 ========================================================================
767 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
768 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
770 This package began as the union of the following:
771 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.