1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
7 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
8 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
10 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
11 support but with insufficient /proc support.
13 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
14 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
16 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
17 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
18 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
19 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
20 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
21 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
23 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
24 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
27 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
28 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
30 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
33 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
34 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
35 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
37 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
38 directory is unreadable.
40 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
41 Before it would print nothing.
43 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
47 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
48 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
49 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
53 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
54 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
55 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
56 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
59 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
63 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
64 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
65 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
66 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
67 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
68 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
69 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
71 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
72 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
73 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
74 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
75 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
76 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
77 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
78 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
80 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
81 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
82 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
85 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
89 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
90 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
92 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
93 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
94 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
96 ** Improved robustness
98 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
99 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
100 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
103 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
107 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
108 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
109 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
110 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
111 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
113 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
117 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
120 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
124 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
125 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
126 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
127 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
129 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
130 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
132 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
133 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
134 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
137 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
139 ** Improved robustness
141 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
142 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
144 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
145 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
146 or NFS-mounted partition.
148 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
149 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
153 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
154 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
155 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
156 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
157 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
158 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
160 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
161 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
163 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
164 or neglect to report file removal.
166 For the "groups" command:
168 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
169 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
171 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
173 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
175 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
179 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
180 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
183 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
185 ** Changes in behavior
187 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
188 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
189 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
190 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
192 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
193 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
194 a final `./' or `../' component.
196 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
197 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
200 ** Infrastructure changes
202 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
203 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
204 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
205 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
209 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
212 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
213 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
214 dirent.d_type support.
216 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
217 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
219 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
220 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
221 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
222 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
225 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
227 ** Changes in behavior
229 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
233 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
234 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
238 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
239 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
240 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
242 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
243 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
245 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
246 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
248 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
250 ** Improved robustness
252 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
253 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
254 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
256 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
257 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
260 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
261 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
263 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
264 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
266 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
267 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
269 ** Changes in behavior
271 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
272 where the two are distinct.
274 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
275 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
276 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
277 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
278 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
279 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
280 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
281 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
282 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
283 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
284 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
285 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
286 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
287 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
288 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
289 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
290 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
292 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
293 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
294 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
296 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
297 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
298 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
299 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
302 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
303 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
307 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
308 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
309 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
310 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
312 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
313 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
314 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
316 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
317 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
318 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
319 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
320 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
323 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
324 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
326 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
327 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
328 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
329 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
331 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
332 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
333 successful and the output is easier to parse.
335 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
336 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
337 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
338 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
340 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
341 and sticky) with the -m option.
343 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
344 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
345 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
346 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
347 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
349 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
350 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
352 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
356 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
357 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
358 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
359 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
361 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
363 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
365 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
366 silently ignoring one of them.
368 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
369 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
370 containing this change was 5.92.
372 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
373 automatically newline terminated.
375 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
376 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
377 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
378 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
381 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
382 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
383 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
386 ** Scheduled for removal
388 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
389 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
391 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
392 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
393 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
394 command to unlink a directory.
396 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
397 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
398 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
399 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
403 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
404 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
405 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
406 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
407 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
408 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
412 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
413 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
415 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
417 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
418 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
419 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
421 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
422 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
425 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
426 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
428 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
429 list directories before files.
431 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
432 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
433 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
434 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
437 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
439 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
441 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
442 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
443 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
445 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
446 list of NUL-terminated file names.
450 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
451 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
452 usually printing nothing.
454 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
456 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
457 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
458 them with hard-linked directories.
460 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
461 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
462 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
464 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
465 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
466 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
468 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
471 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
472 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
474 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
475 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
477 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
478 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
480 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
481 all command-line arguments.
483 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
485 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
487 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
488 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
490 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
492 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
493 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
494 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
495 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
496 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
498 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
499 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
501 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
502 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
503 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
504 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
506 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
508 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
512 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
513 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
515 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
516 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
518 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
519 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
521 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
522 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
524 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
525 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
527 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
529 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
530 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
531 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
534 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
536 ** Build-related bug fixes
538 installing .mo files would fail
541 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
545 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
547 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
550 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
554 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
555 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
559 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
561 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
562 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
564 ** Deprecated options
566 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
567 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
569 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
573 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
575 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
576 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
577 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
578 conforming to older POSIX versions.
580 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
583 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
589 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
594 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
596 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
598 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
599 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
600 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
602 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
603 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
604 problematic usages. These include:
606 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
607 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
608 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
609 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
610 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
611 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
612 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
613 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
614 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
616 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
617 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
619 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
620 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
621 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
622 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
624 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
625 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
626 between binary and text files.
628 The following programs now always use text input/output:
632 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
636 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
637 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
640 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
642 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
643 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
645 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
646 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
647 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
649 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
651 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
653 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
654 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
655 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
659 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
661 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
662 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
664 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
665 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
666 blocks until F contains N blocks.
670 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
671 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
675 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
676 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
677 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
681 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
682 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
686 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
688 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
690 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
694 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
695 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
696 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
698 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
699 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
700 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
701 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
702 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
704 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
708 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
709 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
710 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
712 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
714 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
715 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
716 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
717 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
719 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
721 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
722 rather than silently wrapping around.
724 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
725 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
727 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
728 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
730 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
731 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
732 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
735 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
737 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
739 ** Improved robustness
741 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
742 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
743 no matter how large the result.
745 ** Improved portability
747 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
748 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
750 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
752 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
753 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
754 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
756 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
757 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
761 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
762 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
764 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
766 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
767 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
768 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
769 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
771 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
772 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
774 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
775 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
776 categories if not specified by dircolors.
778 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
780 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
781 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
783 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
784 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
786 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
788 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
789 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
791 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
792 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
794 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
795 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
796 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
798 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
800 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
802 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
806 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
808 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
809 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
810 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
812 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
813 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
815 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
816 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
817 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
819 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
820 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
822 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
823 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
824 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
825 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
827 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
828 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
830 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
831 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
832 the file system does not support it.
834 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
836 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
837 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
839 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
841 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
842 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
844 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
845 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
846 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
847 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
849 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
850 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
853 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
854 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
855 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
856 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
858 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
859 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
860 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
861 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
863 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
864 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
866 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
868 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
869 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
870 reporting incorrect results.
874 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
875 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
877 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
880 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
882 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
883 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
885 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
886 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
888 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
891 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
892 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
893 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
894 the file name does not look like a page range.
896 printf has several changes:
898 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
899 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
901 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
902 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
903 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
905 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
906 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
909 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
910 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
912 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
913 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
915 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
917 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
918 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
920 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
922 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
924 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
925 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
926 when first encountering the directory.
930 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
931 output; POSIX requires this.
933 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
934 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
936 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
938 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
939 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
941 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
942 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
944 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
945 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
946 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
947 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
948 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
949 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
950 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
952 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
953 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
954 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
956 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
957 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
959 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
961 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
963 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
964 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
965 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
966 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
968 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
972 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
973 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
974 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
975 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
976 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
978 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
979 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
980 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
982 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
983 is longer than PATH_MAX.
985 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
986 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
988 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
989 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
990 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
991 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
992 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
994 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
995 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
997 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
998 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1000 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1002 nocreat do not create the output file
1003 excl fail if the output file already exists
1004 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1005 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1007 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1009 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1010 direct use direct I/O for data
1011 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1012 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1013 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1014 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1015 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1017 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1019 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1020 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1023 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1024 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1025 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1026 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1027 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1028 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1030 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1031 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1033 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1036 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1038 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1040 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1041 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1043 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1044 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1045 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1047 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1048 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1049 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1051 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1053 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1054 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1056 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1057 for compatibility with bash.
1059 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1061 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1062 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1063 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1064 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1066 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1067 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1069 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1070 ls supports TABSIZE.
1071 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1072 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1073 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1075 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1078 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1080 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1081 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1082 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1083 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1084 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1085 an offset, not as a file name.
1087 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1088 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1090 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1091 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1093 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1094 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1096 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1097 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1098 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1100 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1101 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1103 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1104 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1108 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1110 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1112 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1116 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1117 or more arguments between partitions.
1119 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1120 holes in the destination.
1122 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1123 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1124 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1125 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1126 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1127 terminates immediately.
1129 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1131 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1133 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1134 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1135 not the empty string.
1137 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1138 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1142 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1143 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1144 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1147 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1154 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1158 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1159 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1161 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1162 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1164 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1165 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1166 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1169 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1173 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1174 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1176 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1177 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1179 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1180 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1181 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1183 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1185 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1188 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1190 ** Configuration option
1192 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1193 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1197 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1198 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1202 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1203 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1204 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1207 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1208 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1209 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1210 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1211 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1212 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1213 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1216 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1220 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1221 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1222 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1224 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1225 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1227 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1229 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1230 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1231 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1232 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1234 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1236 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1237 not just the ones that reference directories
1239 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1240 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1242 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1243 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1244 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1246 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1247 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1248 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1249 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1250 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1251 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1253 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1258 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1259 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1261 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1263 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1265 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1267 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1268 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1270 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1271 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1273 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1275 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1279 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1281 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1283 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1284 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1285 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1286 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1287 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1289 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1290 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1292 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1293 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1295 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1296 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1298 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1299 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1300 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1304 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1305 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1306 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1307 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1308 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1309 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1310 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1311 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1312 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1313 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1314 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1315 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1316 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1317 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1319 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1321 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1322 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1324 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1326 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1328 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1329 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1331 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1333 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1334 without a trailing newline.
1336 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1337 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1339 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1342 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1346 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1348 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1350 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1351 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1352 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1353 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1355 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1357 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1358 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1359 be printed without leading spaces.
1361 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1362 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1367 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1368 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1369 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1371 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1373 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1374 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1376 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1377 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1379 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1380 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1382 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1384 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1386 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1388 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1389 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1391 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1393 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1395 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1396 byte offsets are specified.
1399 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1402 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1405 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1406 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1407 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1408 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1409 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1410 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1411 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1412 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1413 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1414 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1415 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1416 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1417 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1418 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1419 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1420 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1421 directory where M has write access.
1422 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1423 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1424 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1427 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1428 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1429 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1430 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1431 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1432 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1433 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1434 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1435 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1436 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1437 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1438 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1439 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1440 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1441 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1442 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1443 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1444 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1445 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1446 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1447 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1448 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1449 appeared one additional time.
1451 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1452 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1453 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1454 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1457 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1458 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1459 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1460 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1461 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1462 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1463 if there were more than 338.
1465 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1466 - false --help now exits nonzero
1469 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1470 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1471 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1472 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1475 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1476 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1477 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1478 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1479 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1482 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1483 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1484 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1485 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1486 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1487 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1488 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1491 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1492 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1493 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1494 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1495 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1496 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1498 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1499 under certain unusual conditions
1500 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1501 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1504 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1505 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1506 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1507 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1508 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1509 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1510 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1511 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1512 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1513 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1514 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1515 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1516 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1517 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1518 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1519 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1522 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1523 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1526 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1527 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1528 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1529 involving hard-linked directories
1530 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1531 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1532 character-special and block files
1535 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1536 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1537 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1538 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1539 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1540 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1541 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1542 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1543 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1545 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1546 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1547 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1548 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1549 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1550 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1551 specified on the command line.
1552 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1553 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1554 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1555 the first file untouched.
1556 * readlink: new program
1557 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1558 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1559 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1560 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1561 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1562 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1565 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1566 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1567 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1568 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1569 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1570 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1571 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1572 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1573 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1574 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1575 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1576 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1578 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1579 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1580 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1582 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1583 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1584 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1585 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1586 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1587 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1588 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1589 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1592 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1593 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1596 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1597 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1598 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1599 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1600 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1601 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1602 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1605 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1606 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1608 ========================================================================
1609 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1610 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1613 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1615 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1616 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1617 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1618 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1619 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1620 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1621 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1622 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1623 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1624 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1625 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1626 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1628 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1629 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1630 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1631 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1633 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1636 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1638 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1639 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1640 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1641 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1642 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1643 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1644 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1647 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1648 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1649 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1650 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1651 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1652 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1653 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1654 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1655 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1656 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1657 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1658 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1659 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1660 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1661 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1662 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1664 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1665 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1667 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1668 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1669 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1670 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1671 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1672 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1674 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1675 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1676 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1677 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1678 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1679 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1680 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1682 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1683 the source files in the following example:
1684 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1685 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1686 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1687 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1688 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1689 links between source files with --preserve=links
1690 * cp accepts new options:
1691 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1692 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1693 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1694 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1695 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1696 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1697 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1698 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1699 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1701 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1702 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1703 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1704 even though it's older than dest.
1705 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1706 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1707 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1708 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1709 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1711 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1712 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1713 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1714 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1715 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1716 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1717 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1719 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1720 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1721 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1723 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1724 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1725 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1726 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1727 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1728 This is the default.
1730 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1731 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1732 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1733 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1734 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1736 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1739 ========================================================================
1740 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1741 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1744 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1745 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1747 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1748 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1749 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1750 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1751 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1753 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1754 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1755 that specifies a non-directory
1758 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1759 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1760 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1761 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1762 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1763 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1764 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1765 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1766 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1767 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1768 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1769 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1770 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1771 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1772 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1773 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1774 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1775 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1776 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1777 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1778 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1779 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1780 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1781 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1783 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1784 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1785 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1787 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1789 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1790 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1792 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1793 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1794 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1795 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1796 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1798 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1799 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1800 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1801 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1802 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1804 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1806 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1807 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1808 * still more portability fixes
1809 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1810 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1812 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1814 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1816 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1818 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1819 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1820 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1821 there is any time remaining
1822 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1824 ========================================================================
1825 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1826 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1828 This package began as the union of the following:
1829 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1831 ========================================================================
1833 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1836 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1837 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1838 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1839 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1840 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1841 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.