1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
8 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
9 and libraries tested at configure time.
10 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
12 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
13 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
15 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
16 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
18 dd now returns non-zero status if it encountered a write error while
19 printing a summary to stderr.
20 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
22 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
23 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
25 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
26 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
27 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
28 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
30 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
31 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
32 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
33 which is relatively unusual.
34 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
36 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
37 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
38 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
39 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
40 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
41 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
42 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
46 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
47 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
49 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
53 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
54 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
56 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
57 before data copying has started.
59 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
60 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
62 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
63 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
64 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
65 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
67 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
68 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
69 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
70 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
72 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
77 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
78 for its standard streams.
80 ** Changes in behavior
82 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
83 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
84 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
85 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
86 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
87 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
91 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
92 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
96 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
98 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
99 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
102 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
104 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
105 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
107 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
108 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
111 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
115 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
116 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
117 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
118 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
120 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
121 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
122 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
123 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
124 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
129 make check: two tests have been corrected
133 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
134 inherited from gnulib.
137 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
141 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
142 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
143 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
144 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
146 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
147 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
149 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
151 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
152 systems without xattr support.
154 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
155 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
156 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
158 ** Changes in behavior
160 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
161 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
162 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
163 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
165 ** Improved robustness
167 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
168 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
169 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
170 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
171 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
172 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
173 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
174 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
175 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
179 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
180 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
182 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
183 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
184 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
185 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
186 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
189 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
193 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
194 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
195 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
199 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
200 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
201 data was read, or on process exit.
202 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
204 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
205 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
206 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
207 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
209 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
210 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
211 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
212 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
214 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
215 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
217 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
218 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
220 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
221 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
222 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
224 ** Changes in behavior
226 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
227 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
228 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
230 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
231 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
233 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
234 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
235 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
238 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
242 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
244 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
245 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
246 install: Never copies xattrs
248 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
249 from overwriting any existing destination file
251 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
252 mode where this feature is available.
254 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
255 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
256 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
257 do not modify the destination at all.
259 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
261 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
265 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
266 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
268 cp uses much less memory in some situations
270 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
271 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
273 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
274 processing the first file name
276 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
277 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
278 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
279 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
281 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
282 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
284 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
285 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
288 ** Changes in behavior
290 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
291 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
293 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
294 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
295 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
297 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
298 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
300 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
302 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
303 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
304 is still marked with a '+'.
307 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
311 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
312 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
316 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
317 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
318 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
319 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
320 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
321 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
323 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
324 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
326 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
327 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
329 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
331 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
332 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
333 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
335 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
336 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
338 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
339 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
340 used to factor large numbers.
342 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
345 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
347 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
349 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
350 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
352 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
353 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
354 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
355 maximum command-line (argv) length.
357 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
358 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
359 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
361 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
362 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
366 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
368 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
369 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
371 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
372 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
374 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
376 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
377 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
381 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
382 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
383 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
385 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
387 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
388 no matter how many files are in a given directory
390 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
391 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
392 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
394 ** Changes in behavior
396 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
397 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
400 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
404 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
406 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
407 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
408 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
410 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
411 with no USERNAME argument.
413 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
414 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
415 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
417 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
418 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
419 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
420 number of fields for some inputs.
422 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
423 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
425 ** Changes in behavior
427 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
428 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
431 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
435 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
437 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
438 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
439 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
440 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
442 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
443 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
445 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
446 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
448 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
449 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
451 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
452 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
453 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
454 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
456 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
457 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
458 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
459 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
460 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
461 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
463 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
464 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
466 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
467 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
468 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
470 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
471 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
473 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
474 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
476 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
477 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
478 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
479 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
481 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
482 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
484 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
485 in more cases when a directory is empty.
487 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
488 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
489 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
493 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
494 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
496 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
497 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
498 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
499 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
503 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
504 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
506 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
508 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
512 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
513 which have negative errno values.
517 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
521 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
525 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
526 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
529 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
533 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
534 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
535 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
537 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
538 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
539 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
540 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
544 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
545 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
546 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
547 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
550 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
554 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
556 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
557 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
558 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
561 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
565 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
566 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
568 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
570 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
572 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
574 ** Programs no longer installed by default
578 ** Changes in behavior
580 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
581 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
583 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
584 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
586 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
587 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
588 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
592 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
593 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
594 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
595 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
596 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
597 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
598 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
599 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
600 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
601 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
602 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
604 The following commands and options now support the standard size
605 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
606 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
609 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
612 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
613 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
614 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
616 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
617 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
618 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
623 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
624 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
625 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
626 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
628 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
629 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
630 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
631 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
632 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
633 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
634 of "make check" fail.
636 ** Remove deprecated options
638 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
639 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
640 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
641 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
642 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
644 ** Improved robustness
646 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
647 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
648 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
649 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
650 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
651 loss of the contents of a/f.
653 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
654 in its 35-colon command-line argument
658 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
659 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
660 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
662 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
663 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
664 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
665 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
667 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
668 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
669 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
670 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
671 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
672 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
673 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
674 destination is a symlink.
676 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
678 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
679 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
681 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
682 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
684 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
686 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
687 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
689 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
690 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
692 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
695 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
696 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
698 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
699 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
701 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
702 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
703 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
704 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
706 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
707 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
708 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
710 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
711 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
712 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
714 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
715 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
716 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
717 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
719 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
720 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
721 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
723 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
724 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
726 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
727 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
729 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
731 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
732 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
733 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
735 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
736 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
738 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
739 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
741 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
742 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
744 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
745 [present in the original version]
748 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
752 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
754 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
755 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
756 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
758 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
759 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
761 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
765 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
766 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
768 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
769 support but with insufficient /proc support.
771 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
772 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
774 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
775 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
776 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
777 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
778 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
779 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
781 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
782 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
785 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
786 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
788 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
791 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
792 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
793 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
795 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
796 directory is unreadable.
798 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
799 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
800 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
802 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
803 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
804 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
805 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
806 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
809 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
810 Before it would print nothing.
812 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
814 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
815 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
816 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
817 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
818 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
819 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
820 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
821 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
823 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
827 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
828 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
829 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
831 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
832 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
833 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
834 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
837 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
841 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
842 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
843 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
844 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
845 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
846 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
847 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
849 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
850 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
851 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
852 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
853 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
854 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
855 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
856 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
858 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
859 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
860 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
863 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
867 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
868 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
870 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
871 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
872 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
874 ** Improved robustness
876 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
877 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
878 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
881 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
885 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
886 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
887 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
888 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
889 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
891 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
895 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
898 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
902 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
903 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
904 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
905 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
907 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
908 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
910 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
911 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
912 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
915 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
917 ** Improved robustness
919 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
920 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
922 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
923 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
924 or NFS-mounted partition.
926 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
927 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
931 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
932 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
933 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
934 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
935 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
936 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
938 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
939 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
941 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
942 or neglect to report file removal.
944 For the "groups" command:
946 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
947 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
949 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
951 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
953 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
957 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
958 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
961 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
963 ** Changes in behavior
965 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
966 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
967 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
968 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
970 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
971 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
972 a final `./' or `../' component.
974 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
975 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
978 ** Infrastructure changes
980 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
981 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
982 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
983 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
987 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
990 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
991 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
992 dirent.d_type support.
994 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
995 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
997 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
998 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
999 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1000 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1003 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1005 ** Changes in behavior
1007 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1011 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1012 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1016 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1017 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1018 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1020 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1021 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1023 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1024 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1026 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1028 ** Improved robustness
1030 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1031 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1032 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1034 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1035 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1038 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1039 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1041 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1042 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1044 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1045 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1047 ** Changes in behavior
1049 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1050 where the two are distinct.
1052 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1053 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1054 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1055 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1056 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1057 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1058 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1059 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1060 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1061 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1062 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1063 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1064 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1065 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1066 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1067 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1068 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1070 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1071 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1072 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1074 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1075 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1076 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1077 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1080 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1081 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1085 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1086 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1087 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1088 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1090 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1091 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1092 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1094 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1095 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1096 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1097 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1098 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1101 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1102 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1104 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1105 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1106 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1107 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1109 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1110 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1111 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1113 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1114 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1115 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1116 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1118 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1119 and sticky) with the -m option.
1121 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1122 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1123 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1124 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1125 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1127 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1128 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1130 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1134 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1135 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1136 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1137 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1139 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1141 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1143 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1144 silently ignoring one of them.
1146 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1147 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1148 containing this change was 5.92.
1150 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1151 automatically newline terminated.
1153 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1154 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1155 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1156 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1159 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1160 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1161 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1164 ** Scheduled for removal
1166 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1167 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1169 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1170 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1171 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1172 command to unlink a directory.
1174 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1175 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1176 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1177 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1181 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1182 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1183 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1184 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1185 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1186 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1190 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1191 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1193 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1195 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1196 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1197 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1199 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1200 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1203 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1204 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1206 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1207 list directories before files.
1209 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1210 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1211 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1212 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1215 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1217 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1219 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1220 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1221 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1223 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1224 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1228 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1229 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1230 usually printing nothing.
1232 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1234 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1235 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1236 them with hard-linked directories.
1238 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1239 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1240 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1242 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1243 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1244 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1246 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1249 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1250 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1252 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1253 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1255 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1256 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1258 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1259 all command-line arguments.
1261 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1263 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1265 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1266 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1268 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1270 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1271 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1272 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1273 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1274 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1276 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1277 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1279 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1280 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1281 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1282 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1284 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1286 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1290 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1291 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1293 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1294 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1296 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1297 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1299 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1300 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1302 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1303 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1305 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1307 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1308 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1309 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1312 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1314 ** Build-related bug fixes
1316 installing .mo files would fail
1319 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1323 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1325 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1328 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1332 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1333 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1337 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1339 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1340 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1342 ** Deprecated options
1344 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1345 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1347 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1351 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1353 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1354 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1355 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1356 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1358 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1361 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1367 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1372 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1374 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1376 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1377 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1378 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1380 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1381 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1382 problematic usages. These include:
1384 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1385 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1386 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1387 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1388 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1389 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1390 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1391 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1392 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1394 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1395 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1397 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1398 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1399 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1400 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1402 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1403 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1404 between binary and text files.
1406 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1410 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1414 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1415 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1417 head tac tail tee tr
1418 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1420 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1421 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1423 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1424 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1425 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1427 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1429 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1431 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1432 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1433 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1437 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1439 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1440 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1442 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1443 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1444 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1448 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1449 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1453 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1454 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1455 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1459 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1460 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1464 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1466 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1468 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1472 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1473 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1474 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1476 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1477 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1478 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1479 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1480 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1482 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1486 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1487 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1488 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1490 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1492 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1493 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1494 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1495 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1497 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1499 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1500 rather than silently wrapping around.
1502 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1503 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1505 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1506 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1508 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1509 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1510 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1511 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1513 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1515 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1517 ** Improved robustness
1519 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1520 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1521 no matter how large the result.
1523 ** Improved portability
1525 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1526 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1528 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1530 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1531 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1532 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1534 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1535 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1539 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1540 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1542 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1544 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1545 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1546 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1547 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1549 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1550 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1552 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1553 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1554 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1556 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1558 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1559 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1561 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1562 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1564 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1566 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1567 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1569 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1570 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1572 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1573 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1574 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1576 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1578 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1580 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1584 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1586 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1587 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1588 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1590 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1591 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1593 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1594 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1595 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1597 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1598 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1600 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1601 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1602 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1603 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1605 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1606 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1608 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1609 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1610 the file system does not support it.
1612 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1614 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1615 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1617 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1619 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1620 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1622 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1623 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1624 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1625 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1627 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1628 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1631 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1632 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1633 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1634 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1636 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1637 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1638 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1639 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1641 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1642 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1644 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1646 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1647 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1648 reporting incorrect results.
1652 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1653 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1655 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1658 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1660 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1661 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1663 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1664 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1666 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1669 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1670 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1671 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1672 the file name does not look like a page range.
1674 printf has several changes:
1676 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1677 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1679 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1680 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1681 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1683 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1684 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1687 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1688 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1690 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1691 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1693 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1695 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1696 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1698 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1700 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1702 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1703 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1704 when first encountering the directory.
1708 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1709 output; POSIX requires this.
1711 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1712 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1714 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1716 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1717 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1719 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1720 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1722 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1723 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1724 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1725 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1726 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1727 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1728 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1730 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1731 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1732 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1734 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1735 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1737 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1739 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1741 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1742 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1743 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1744 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1746 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1750 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1751 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1752 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1753 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1754 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1756 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1757 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1758 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1760 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1761 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1763 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1764 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1766 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1767 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1768 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1769 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1770 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1772 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1773 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1775 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1776 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1778 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1780 nocreat do not create the output file
1781 excl fail if the output file already exists
1782 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1783 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1785 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1787 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1788 direct use direct I/O for data
1789 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1790 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1791 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1792 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1793 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1795 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1797 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1798 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1801 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1802 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1803 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1804 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1805 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1806 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1808 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1809 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1811 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1814 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1816 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1818 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1819 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1821 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1822 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1823 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1825 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1826 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1827 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1829 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1831 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1832 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1834 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1835 for compatibility with bash.
1837 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1839 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1840 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1841 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1842 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1844 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1845 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1847 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1848 ls supports TABSIZE.
1849 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1850 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1851 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1853 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1856 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1858 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1859 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1860 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1861 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1862 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1863 an offset, not as a file name.
1865 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1866 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1868 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1869 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1871 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1872 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1874 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1875 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1876 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1878 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1879 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1881 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1882 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1886 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1888 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1890 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1894 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1895 or more arguments between partitions.
1897 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1898 holes in the destination.
1900 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1901 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1902 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1903 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1904 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1905 terminates immediately.
1907 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1909 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1911 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1912 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1913 not the empty string.
1915 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1916 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1920 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1921 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1922 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1925 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1932 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1936 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1937 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1939 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1940 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1942 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1943 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1944 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1947 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1951 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1952 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1954 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1955 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1957 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1958 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1959 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1961 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1963 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1966 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1968 ** Configuration option
1970 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1971 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1975 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1976 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1980 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1981 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1982 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1985 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1986 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1987 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1988 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1989 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1990 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1991 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1994 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1998 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1999 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2000 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2002 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2003 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2005 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2007 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2008 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2009 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2010 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2012 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2014 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2015 not just the ones that reference directories
2017 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2018 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2020 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2021 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2022 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2024 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2025 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2026 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2027 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2028 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2029 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2031 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2036 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2037 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2039 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2041 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2043 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2045 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2046 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2048 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2049 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2051 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2053 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2057 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2059 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2061 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2062 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2063 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2064 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2065 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2067 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2068 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2070 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2071 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2073 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2074 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2076 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2077 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2078 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2082 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2083 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2084 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2085 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2086 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2087 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2088 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2089 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2090 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2091 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2092 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2093 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2094 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2095 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2097 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2099 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2100 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2102 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2104 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2106 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2107 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2109 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2111 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2112 without a trailing newline.
2114 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2115 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2117 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2120 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2124 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2126 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2128 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2129 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2130 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2131 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2133 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2135 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2136 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2137 be printed without leading spaces.
2139 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2140 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2145 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2146 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2147 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2149 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2151 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2152 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2154 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2155 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2157 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2158 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2160 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2162 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2164 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2166 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2167 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2169 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2171 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2173 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2174 byte offsets are specified.
2177 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2180 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2183 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2184 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2185 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2186 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2187 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2188 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2189 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2190 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2191 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2192 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2193 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2194 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2195 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2196 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2197 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2198 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2199 directory where M has write access.
2200 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2201 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2202 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2205 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2206 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2207 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2208 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2209 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2210 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2211 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2212 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2213 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2214 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2215 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2216 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2217 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2218 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2219 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2220 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2221 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2222 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2223 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2224 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2225 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2226 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2227 appeared one additional time.
2229 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2230 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2231 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2232 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2235 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2236 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2237 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2238 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2239 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2240 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2241 if there were more than 338.
2243 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2244 - false --help now exits nonzero
2247 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2248 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2249 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2250 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2253 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2254 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2255 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2256 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2257 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2260 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2261 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2262 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2263 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2264 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2265 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2266 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2269 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2270 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2271 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2272 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2273 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2274 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2276 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2277 under certain unusual conditions
2278 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2279 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2282 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2283 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2284 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2285 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2286 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2287 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2288 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2289 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2290 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2291 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2292 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2293 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2294 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2295 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2296 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2297 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2300 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2301 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2304 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2305 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2306 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2307 involving hard-linked directories
2308 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2309 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2310 character-special and block files
2313 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2314 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2315 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2316 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2317 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2318 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2319 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2320 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2321 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2323 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2324 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2325 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2326 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2327 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2328 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2329 specified on the command line.
2330 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2331 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2332 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2333 the first file untouched.
2334 * readlink: new program
2335 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2336 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2337 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2338 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2339 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2340 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2343 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2344 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2345 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2346 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2347 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2348 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2349 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2350 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2351 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2352 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2353 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2354 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2356 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2357 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2358 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2360 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2361 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2362 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2363 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2364 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2365 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2366 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2367 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2370 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2371 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2374 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2375 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2376 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2377 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2378 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2379 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2380 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2383 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2384 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2386 ========================================================================
2387 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2388 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2391 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2393 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2394 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2395 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2396 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2397 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2398 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2399 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2400 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2401 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2402 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2403 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2404 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2406 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2407 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2408 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2409 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2411 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2414 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2416 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2417 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2418 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2419 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2420 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2421 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2422 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2425 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2426 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2427 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2428 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2429 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2430 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2431 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2432 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2433 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2434 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2435 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2436 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2437 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2438 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2439 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2440 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2442 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2443 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2445 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2446 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2447 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2448 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2449 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2450 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2452 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2453 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2454 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2455 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2456 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2457 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2458 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2460 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2461 the source files in the following example:
2462 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2463 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2464 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2465 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2466 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2467 links between source files with --preserve=links
2468 * cp accepts new options:
2469 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2470 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2471 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2472 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2473 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2474 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2475 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2476 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2477 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2479 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2480 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2481 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2482 even though it's older than dest.
2483 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2484 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2485 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2486 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2487 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2489 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2490 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2491 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2492 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2493 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2494 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2495 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2497 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2498 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2499 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2501 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2502 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2503 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2504 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2505 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2506 This is the default.
2508 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2509 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2510 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2511 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2512 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2514 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2517 ========================================================================
2518 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2519 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2522 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2523 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2525 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2526 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2527 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2528 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2529 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2531 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2532 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2533 that specifies a non-directory
2536 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2537 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2538 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2539 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2540 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2541 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2542 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2543 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2544 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2545 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2546 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2547 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2548 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2549 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2550 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2551 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2552 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2553 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2554 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2555 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2556 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2557 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2558 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2559 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2561 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2562 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2563 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2565 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2567 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2568 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2570 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2571 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2572 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2573 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2574 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2576 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2577 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2578 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2579 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2580 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2582 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2584 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2585 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2586 * still more portability fixes
2587 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2588 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2590 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2592 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2594 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2596 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2597 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2598 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2599 there is any time remaining
2600 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2602 ========================================================================
2603 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2604 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2606 This package began as the union of the following:
2607 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2609 ========================================================================
2611 Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2613 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2614 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2615 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2616 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2617 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2618 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.