1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
7 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
8 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
9 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
10 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
11 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
13 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
14 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
16 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
17 reject file names invalid for that file system.
19 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
20 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
24 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
25 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
26 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
27 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
28 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
29 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
30 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
31 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
33 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
34 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
35 the same number of fields are output for each line.
37 ** Changes in behavior
39 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
40 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
41 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
44 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
48 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
49 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
50 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
53 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
57 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
58 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
60 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
61 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
63 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
64 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
66 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
67 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
68 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
69 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
71 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
72 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
74 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
75 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
76 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
78 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
80 ** Changes in behavior
82 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
83 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
84 to the number of available processors.
88 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
91 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
95 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
96 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
97 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
98 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
100 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
101 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
102 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
104 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
105 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
107 ** Changes in behavior
109 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
110 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
112 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
113 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
114 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
115 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
116 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
117 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
119 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
120 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
121 the same way as the others.
124 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
128 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
129 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
130 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
132 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
133 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
135 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
136 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
137 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
139 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
140 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
142 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
143 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
145 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
146 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
147 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
149 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
150 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
151 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
152 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
156 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
157 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
159 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
162 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
163 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
165 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
167 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
168 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
169 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
171 ** Changes in behavior
173 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
174 rather than its aliased target.
176 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
177 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
178 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
180 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
181 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
182 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
183 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
184 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
185 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
186 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
187 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
189 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
191 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
193 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
194 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
197 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
198 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
199 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
200 control like taskset for example.
202 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
204 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
205 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
206 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
207 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
208 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
209 includes %C when context information is available.
211 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
212 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
213 rather than a file system attribute.
215 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
216 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
217 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
218 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
220 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
221 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
222 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
224 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
225 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
226 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
229 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
233 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
234 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
236 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
238 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
239 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
241 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
242 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
243 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
244 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
246 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
247 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
248 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
252 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
253 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
255 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
256 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
257 duration after the initial signal was sent.
259 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
260 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
261 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
262 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
263 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
264 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
265 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
266 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
267 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
269 ** Changes in behavior
271 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
272 sequence when it would be a no-op.
274 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
275 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
278 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
282 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
283 of available processors, which may not have been the case
284 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
285 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
289 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
290 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
292 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
293 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
294 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
295 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
297 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
298 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
299 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
302 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
306 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
307 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
308 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
310 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
311 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
312 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
314 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
315 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
317 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
318 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
319 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
320 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
322 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
323 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
324 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
326 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
327 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
328 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
329 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
331 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
332 renamed-aside and then recreated.
333 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
335 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
336 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
337 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
338 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
340 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
341 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
342 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
344 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
345 processes will not intersperse their output.
346 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
349 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
353 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
354 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
356 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
357 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
359 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
360 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
361 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
362 the presence of the empty string argument.
363 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
365 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
366 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
367 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
368 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
370 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
371 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
373 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
374 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
375 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
377 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
378 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
379 and with a malicious user on the same system
380 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
381 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
384 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
388 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
389 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
390 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
392 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
393 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
394 offending directory and all "contents."
396 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
397 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
398 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
400 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
401 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
402 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
404 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
405 processes will not intersperse their output.
406 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
407 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
409 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
410 output the name of the file to stdout.
411 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
413 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
414 call fails with errno == EACCES.
415 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
417 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
418 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
421 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
422 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
423 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
425 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
426 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
427 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
428 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
429 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
430 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
432 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
433 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
434 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
435 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
437 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
438 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
440 ** Changes in behavior
442 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
443 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
444 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
445 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
446 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
448 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
449 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
450 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
451 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
453 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
455 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
456 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
457 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
458 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
459 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
463 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
467 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
468 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
470 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
471 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
473 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
474 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
475 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
477 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
478 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
481 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
485 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
486 when the source file doesn't have write access.
487 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
489 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
490 to accommodate leap seconds.
491 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
493 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
494 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
495 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
497 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
499 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
500 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
501 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
503 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
504 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
505 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
506 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
507 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
511 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
512 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
513 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
514 directory or a symlink to a directory.
516 ** Changes in behavior
518 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
519 environment variable is set.
521 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
522 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
523 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
527 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
528 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
529 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
530 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
532 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
533 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
534 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
535 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
539 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
540 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
541 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
543 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
544 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
545 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
546 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
547 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
548 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
551 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
552 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
555 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
559 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
560 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
561 and libraries tested at configure time.
562 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
564 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
565 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
567 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
568 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
570 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
571 printing a summary to stderr.
572 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
574 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
575 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
576 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
578 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
579 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
581 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
582 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
583 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
584 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
586 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
587 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
588 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
589 which is relatively unusual.
590 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
592 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
593 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
594 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
595 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
596 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
597 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
598 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
602 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
603 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
604 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
605 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
606 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
610 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
611 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
613 ** Changes in behavior
615 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
616 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
617 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
618 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
619 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
622 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
626 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
627 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
629 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
630 before data copying has started.
632 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
633 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
635 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
636 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
637 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
638 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
640 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
641 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
642 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
643 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
645 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
650 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
651 for its standard streams.
653 ** Changes in behavior
655 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
656 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
657 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
658 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
659 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
660 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
662 ** Deprecated options
664 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
665 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
669 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
671 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
672 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
675 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
677 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
678 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
680 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
681 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
684 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
688 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
689 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
690 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
691 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
693 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
694 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
695 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
696 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
697 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
702 make check: two tests have been corrected
706 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
707 inherited from gnulib.
710 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
714 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
715 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
716 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
717 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
719 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
720 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
722 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
724 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
725 systems without xattr support.
727 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
728 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
729 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
731 ** Changes in behavior
733 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
734 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
735 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
736 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
738 ** Improved robustness
740 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
741 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
742 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
743 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
744 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
745 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
746 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
747 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
748 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
752 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
753 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
755 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
756 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
757 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
758 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
759 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
762 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
766 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
767 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
768 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
772 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
773 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
774 data was read, or on process exit.
775 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
777 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
778 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
779 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
780 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
782 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
783 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
784 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
785 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
787 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
788 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
790 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
791 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
793 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
794 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
795 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
797 ** Changes in behavior
799 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
800 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
801 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
803 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
804 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
806 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
807 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
808 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
811 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
815 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
817 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
818 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
819 install: Never copies xattrs
821 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
822 from overwriting any existing destination file
824 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
825 mode where this feature is available.
827 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
828 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
829 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
830 do not modify the destination at all.
832 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
834 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
838 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
839 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
841 cp uses much less memory in some situations
843 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
844 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
846 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
847 processing the first file name
849 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
850 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
851 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
852 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
854 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
855 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
857 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
858 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
861 ** Changes in behavior
863 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
864 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
866 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
867 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
868 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
870 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
871 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
873 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
875 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
876 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
877 is still marked with a '+'.
880 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
884 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
885 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
889 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
890 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
891 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
892 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
893 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
894 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
896 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
897 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
899 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
900 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
902 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
904 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
905 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
906 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
908 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
909 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
911 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
912 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
913 used to factor large numbers.
915 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
918 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
920 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
922 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
923 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
925 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
926 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
927 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
928 maximum command-line (argv) length.
930 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
931 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
932 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
934 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
935 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
939 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
941 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
942 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
944 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
945 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
947 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
949 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
950 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
954 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
955 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
956 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
958 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
960 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
961 no matter how many files are in a given directory
963 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
964 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
965 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
967 ** Changes in behavior
969 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
970 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
973 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
977 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
979 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
980 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
981 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
983 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
984 with no USERNAME argument.
986 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
987 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
988 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
990 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
991 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
992 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
993 number of fields for some inputs.
995 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
996 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
998 ** Changes in behavior
1000 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1001 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1004 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1008 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1010 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1011 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1012 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1013 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1015 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1016 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1018 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1019 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1021 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1022 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1024 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1025 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1026 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1027 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1029 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1030 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1031 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1032 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1033 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1034 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1036 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1037 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1039 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1040 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1041 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1043 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1044 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1046 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1047 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1049 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1050 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1051 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1052 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1054 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1055 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1057 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1058 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1060 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1061 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1062 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1066 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1067 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1069 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1070 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1071 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1072 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1076 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1077 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1079 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1081 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1085 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1086 which have negative errno values.
1090 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1094 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1098 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1099 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1102 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1106 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1107 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1108 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1110 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1111 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1112 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1113 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1117 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1118 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1119 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1120 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1123 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1127 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1129 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1130 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1131 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1134 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1138 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1139 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1141 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1143 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1145 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1147 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1151 ** Changes in behavior
1153 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1154 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1156 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1157 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1159 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1160 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1161 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1165 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1166 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1167 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1168 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1169 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1170 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1171 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1172 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1173 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1174 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1175 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1177 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1178 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1179 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1182 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1185 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1186 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1187 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1189 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1190 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1191 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1194 ** New build options
1196 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1197 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1198 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1199 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1201 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1202 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1203 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1204 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1205 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1206 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1207 of "make check" fail.
1209 ** Remove deprecated options
1211 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1212 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1213 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1214 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1215 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1217 ** Improved robustness
1219 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1220 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1221 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1222 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1223 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1224 loss of the contents of a/f.
1226 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1227 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1231 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1232 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1233 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1235 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1236 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1237 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1238 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1240 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1241 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1242 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1243 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1244 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1245 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1246 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1247 destination is a symlink.
1249 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1251 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1252 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1254 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1255 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1257 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1259 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1260 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1262 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1263 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1265 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1268 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1269 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1271 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1272 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1274 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1275 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1276 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1277 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1279 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1280 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1281 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1283 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1284 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1285 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1287 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1288 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1289 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1290 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1292 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1293 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1294 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1296 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1297 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1299 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1300 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1302 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1304 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1305 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1306 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1308 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1309 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1311 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1312 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1314 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1315 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1317 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1318 [present in the original version]
1321 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1325 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1327 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1328 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1329 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1331 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1332 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1334 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1338 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1339 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1341 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1342 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1344 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1345 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1347 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1348 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1349 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1350 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1351 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1352 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1354 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1355 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1358 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1359 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1361 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1364 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1365 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1366 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1368 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1369 directory is unreadable.
1371 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1372 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1373 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1375 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1376 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1377 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1378 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1379 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1382 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1383 Before it would print nothing.
1385 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1387 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1388 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1389 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1390 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1391 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1392 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1393 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1394 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1396 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1400 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1401 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1402 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1404 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1405 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1406 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1407 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1410 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1414 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1415 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1416 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1417 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1418 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1419 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1420 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1422 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1423 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1424 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1425 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1426 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1427 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1428 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1429 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1431 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1432 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1433 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1436 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1440 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1441 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1443 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1444 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1445 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1447 ** Improved robustness
1449 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1450 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1451 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1454 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1458 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1459 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1460 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1461 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1462 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1464 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1468 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1471 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1475 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1476 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1477 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1478 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1480 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1481 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1483 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1484 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1485 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1488 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1490 ** Improved robustness
1492 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1493 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1495 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1496 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1497 or NFS-mounted partition.
1499 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1500 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1504 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1505 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1506 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1507 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1508 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1509 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1511 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1512 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1514 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1515 or neglect to report file removal.
1517 For the "groups" command:
1519 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1520 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1522 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1524 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1526 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1530 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1531 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1534 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1536 ** Changes in behavior
1538 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1539 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1540 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1541 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1543 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1544 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1545 a final `./' or `../' component.
1547 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1548 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1549 this only for pipes.
1551 ** Infrastructure changes
1553 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1554 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1555 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1556 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1560 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1561 name is "." or "..".
1563 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1564 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1565 dirent.d_type support.
1567 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1568 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1570 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1571 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1572 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1573 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1576 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1578 ** Changes in behavior
1580 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1584 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1585 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1589 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1590 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1591 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1593 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1594 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1596 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1597 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1599 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1601 ** Improved robustness
1603 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1604 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1605 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1607 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1608 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1611 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1612 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1614 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1615 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1617 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1618 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1620 ** Changes in behavior
1622 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1623 where the two are distinct.
1625 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1626 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1627 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1628 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1629 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1630 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1631 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1632 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1633 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1634 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1635 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1636 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1637 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1638 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1639 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1640 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1641 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1643 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1644 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1645 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1647 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1648 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1649 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1650 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1653 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1654 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1658 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1659 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1660 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1661 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1663 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1664 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1665 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1667 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1668 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1669 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1670 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1671 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1674 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1675 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1677 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1678 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1679 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1680 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1682 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1683 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1684 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1686 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1687 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1688 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1689 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1691 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1692 and sticky) with the -m option.
1694 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1695 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1696 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1697 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1698 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1700 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1701 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1703 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1707 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1708 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1709 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1710 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1712 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1714 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1716 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1717 silently ignoring one of them.
1719 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1720 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1721 containing this change was 5.92.
1723 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1724 automatically newline terminated.
1726 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1727 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1728 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1729 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1732 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1733 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1734 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1737 ** Scheduled for removal
1739 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1740 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1742 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1743 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1744 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1745 command to unlink a directory.
1747 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1748 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1749 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1750 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1754 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1755 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1756 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1757 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1758 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1759 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1763 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1764 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1766 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1768 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1769 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1770 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1772 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1773 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1776 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1777 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1779 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1780 list directories before files.
1782 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1783 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1784 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1785 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1788 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1790 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1792 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1793 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1794 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1796 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1797 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1801 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1802 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1803 usually printing nothing.
1805 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1807 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1808 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1809 them with hard-linked directories.
1811 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1812 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1813 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1815 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1816 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1817 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1819 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1822 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1823 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1825 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1826 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1828 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1829 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1831 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1832 all command-line arguments.
1834 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1836 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1838 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1839 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1841 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1843 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1844 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1845 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1846 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1847 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1849 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1850 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1852 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1853 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1854 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1855 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1857 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1859 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1863 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1864 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1866 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1867 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1869 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1870 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1872 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1873 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1875 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1876 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1878 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1880 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1881 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1882 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1885 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1887 ** Build-related bug fixes
1889 installing .mo files would fail
1892 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1896 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1898 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1901 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1905 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1906 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1910 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1912 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1913 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1915 ** Deprecated options
1917 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1918 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1920 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1924 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1926 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1927 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1928 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1929 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1931 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1934 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1940 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1945 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1947 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1949 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1950 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1951 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1953 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1954 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1955 problematic usages. These include:
1957 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1958 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1959 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1960 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1961 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1962 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1963 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1964 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1965 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1967 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1968 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1970 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1971 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1972 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1973 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1975 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1976 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1977 between binary and text files.
1979 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1983 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1987 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1988 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1990 head tac tail tee tr
1991 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1993 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1994 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1996 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1997 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1998 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2000 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2002 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2004 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2005 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2006 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2010 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2012 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2013 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2015 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2016 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2017 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2021 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2022 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2026 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2027 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2028 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2032 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2033 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2037 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2039 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2041 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2045 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2046 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2047 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2049 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2050 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2051 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2052 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2053 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2055 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2059 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2060 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2061 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2063 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2065 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2066 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2067 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2068 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2070 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2072 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2073 rather than silently wrapping around.
2075 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2076 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2078 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2079 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2081 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2082 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2083 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2084 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2086 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2088 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2090 ** Improved robustness
2092 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2093 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2094 no matter how large the result.
2096 ** Improved portability
2098 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2099 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2101 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2103 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2104 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2105 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2107 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2108 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2112 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2113 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2115 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2117 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2118 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2119 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2120 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2122 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2123 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2125 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2126 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2127 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2129 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2131 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2132 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2134 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2135 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2137 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2139 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2140 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2142 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2143 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2145 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2146 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2147 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2149 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2151 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2153 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2157 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2159 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2160 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2161 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2163 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2164 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2166 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2167 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2168 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2170 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2171 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2173 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2174 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2175 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2176 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2178 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2179 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2181 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2182 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2183 the file system does not support it.
2185 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2187 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2188 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2190 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2192 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2193 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2195 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2196 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2197 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2198 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2200 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2201 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2204 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2205 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2206 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2207 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2209 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2210 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2211 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2212 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2214 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2215 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2217 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2219 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2220 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2221 reporting incorrect results.
2225 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2226 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2228 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2231 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2233 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2234 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2236 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2237 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2239 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2242 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2243 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2244 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2245 the file name does not look like a page range.
2247 printf has several changes:
2249 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2250 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2252 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2253 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2254 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2256 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2257 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2260 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2261 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2263 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2264 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2266 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2268 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2269 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2271 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2273 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2275 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2276 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2277 when first encountering the directory.
2281 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2282 output; POSIX requires this.
2284 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2285 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2287 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2289 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2290 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2292 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2293 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2295 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2296 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2297 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2298 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2299 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2300 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2301 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2303 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2304 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2305 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2307 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2308 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2310 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2312 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2314 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2315 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2316 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2317 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2319 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2323 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2324 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2325 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2326 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2327 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2329 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2330 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2331 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2333 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2334 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2336 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2337 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2339 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2340 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2341 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2342 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2343 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2345 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2346 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2348 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2349 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2351 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2353 nocreat do not create the output file
2354 excl fail if the output file already exists
2355 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2356 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2358 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2360 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2361 direct use direct I/O for data
2362 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2363 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2364 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2365 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2366 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2368 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2370 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2371 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2374 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2375 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2376 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2377 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2378 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2379 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2381 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2382 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2384 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2387 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2389 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2391 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2392 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2394 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2395 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2396 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2398 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2399 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2400 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2402 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2404 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2405 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2407 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2408 for compatibility with bash.
2410 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2412 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2413 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2414 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2415 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2417 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2418 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2420 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2421 ls supports TABSIZE.
2422 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2423 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2424 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2426 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2429 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2431 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2432 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2433 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2434 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2435 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2436 an offset, not as a file name.
2438 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2439 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2441 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2442 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2444 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2445 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2447 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2448 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2449 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2451 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2452 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2454 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2455 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2459 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2461 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2463 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2467 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2468 or more arguments between partitions.
2470 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2471 holes in the destination.
2473 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2474 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2475 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2476 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2477 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2478 terminates immediately.
2480 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2482 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2484 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2485 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2486 not the empty string.
2488 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2489 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2493 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2494 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2495 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2498 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2505 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2509 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2510 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2512 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2513 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2515 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2516 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2517 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2520 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2524 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2525 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2527 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2528 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2530 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2531 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2532 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2534 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2536 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2539 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2541 ** Configuration option
2543 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2544 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2548 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2549 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2553 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2554 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2555 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2558 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2559 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2560 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2561 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2562 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2563 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2564 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2567 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2571 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2572 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2573 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2575 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2576 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2578 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2580 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2581 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2582 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2583 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2585 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2587 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2588 not just the ones that reference directories
2590 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2591 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2593 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2594 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2595 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2597 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2598 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2599 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2600 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2601 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2602 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2604 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2609 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2610 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2612 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2614 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2616 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2618 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2619 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2621 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2622 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2624 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2626 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2630 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2632 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2634 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2635 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2636 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2637 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2638 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2640 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2641 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2643 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2644 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2646 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2647 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2649 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2650 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2651 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2655 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2656 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2657 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2658 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2659 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2660 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2661 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2662 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2663 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2664 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2665 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2666 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2667 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2668 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2670 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2672 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2673 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2675 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2677 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2679 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2680 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2682 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2684 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2685 without a trailing newline.
2687 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2688 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2690 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2693 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2697 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2699 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2701 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2702 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2703 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2704 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2706 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2708 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2709 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2710 be printed without leading spaces.
2712 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2713 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2718 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2719 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2720 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2722 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2724 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2725 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2727 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2728 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2730 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2731 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2733 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2735 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2737 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2739 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2740 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2742 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2744 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2746 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2747 byte offsets are specified.
2750 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2753 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2756 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2757 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2758 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2759 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2760 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2761 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2762 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2763 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2764 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2765 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2766 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2767 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2768 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2769 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2770 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2771 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2772 directory where M has write access.
2773 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2774 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2775 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2778 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2779 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2780 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2781 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2782 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2783 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2784 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2785 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2786 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2787 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2788 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2789 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2790 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2791 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2792 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2793 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2794 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2795 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2796 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2797 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2798 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2799 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2800 appeared one additional time.
2802 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2803 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2804 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2805 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2808 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2809 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2810 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2811 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2812 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2813 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2814 if there were more than 338.
2816 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2817 - false --help now exits nonzero
2820 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2821 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2822 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2823 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2826 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2827 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2828 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2829 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2830 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2833 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2834 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2835 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2836 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2837 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2838 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2839 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2842 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2843 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2844 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2845 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2846 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2847 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2849 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2850 under certain unusual conditions
2851 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2852 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2855 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2856 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2857 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2858 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2859 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2860 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2861 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2862 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2863 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2864 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2865 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2866 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2867 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2868 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2869 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2870 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2873 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2874 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2877 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2878 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2879 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2880 involving hard-linked directories
2881 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2882 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2883 character-special and block files
2886 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2887 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2888 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2889 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2890 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2891 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2892 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2893 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2894 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2896 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2897 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2898 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2899 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2900 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2901 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2902 specified on the command line.
2903 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2904 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2905 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2906 the first file untouched.
2907 * readlink: new program
2908 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2909 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2910 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2911 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2912 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2913 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2916 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2917 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2918 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2919 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2920 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2921 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2922 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2923 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2924 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2925 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2926 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2927 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2929 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2930 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2931 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2933 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2934 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2935 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2936 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2937 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2938 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2939 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2940 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2943 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2944 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2947 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2948 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2949 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2950 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2951 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2952 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2953 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2956 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2957 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2959 ========================================================================
2960 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2961 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2964 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2966 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2967 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2968 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2969 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2970 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2971 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2972 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2973 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2974 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2975 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2976 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2977 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2979 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2980 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2981 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2982 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2984 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2987 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2989 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2990 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2991 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2992 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2993 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2994 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2995 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2998 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2999 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3000 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3001 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3002 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
3003 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3004 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
3005 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3006 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3007 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3008 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
3009 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
3010 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3011 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3012 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3013 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3015 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3016 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3018 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3019 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3020 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3021 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3022 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3023 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3025 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3026 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3027 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3028 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3029 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3030 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3031 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3033 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3034 the source files in the following example:
3035 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3036 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3037 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3038 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3039 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3040 links between source files with --preserve=links
3041 * cp accepts new options:
3042 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3043 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3044 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3045 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3046 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3047 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3048 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3049 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
3050 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3052 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3053 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3054 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3055 even though it's older than dest.
3056 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3057 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3058 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3059 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3060 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3062 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3063 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3064 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3065 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3066 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3067 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3068 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3070 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3071 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3072 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3074 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3075 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3076 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3077 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3078 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3079 This is the default.
3081 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3082 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3083 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3084 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3085 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3087 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3090 ========================================================================
3091 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3092 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3095 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3096 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3098 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3099 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3100 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3101 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3102 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3104 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3105 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3106 that specifies a non-directory
3109 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3110 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3111 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3112 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3113 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3114 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3115 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3116 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3117 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3118 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3119 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3120 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3121 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3122 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3123 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3124 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3125 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3126 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3127 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3128 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3129 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3130 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3131 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3132 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3134 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3135 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3136 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3138 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3140 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3141 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3143 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3144 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3145 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3146 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3147 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3149 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3150 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3151 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3152 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3153 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3155 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3157 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3158 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3159 * still more portability fixes
3160 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3161 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3163 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3165 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3167 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3169 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3170 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3171 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3172 there is any time remaining
3173 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3175 ========================================================================
3176 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3177 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3179 This package began as the union of the following:
3180 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3182 ========================================================================
3184 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3186 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3187 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3188 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3189 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3190 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3191 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.