1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 6.0-cvs (????-??-??) [unstable]
7 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
8 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
10 ** Changes in behavior
12 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
13 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
14 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by chrooted
15 bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
17 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
18 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
19 successful and the output is easier to parse.
21 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
22 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
23 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
24 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
26 ** Scheduled for removal
28 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
29 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
30 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
31 command to unlink a directory.
33 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
34 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
35 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
36 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
40 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
41 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
42 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
43 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
47 dd's new iflag=noatime option causes it to read a file without
48 updating its access time, on hosts that support this (currently only
49 Linux kernels, version 2.6.8 and later).
53 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
54 all command-line arguments.
56 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
57 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
58 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
59 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
60 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
63 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
67 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
68 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
70 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
71 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
73 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
74 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
76 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
77 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
79 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
80 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
82 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
84 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
85 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
86 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
89 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
91 ** Build-related bug fixes
93 installing .mo files would fail
96 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
100 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
102 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
105 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
109 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
110 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
114 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
116 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
117 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
119 ** Deprecated options
121 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
122 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
124 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
128 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
130 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
131 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
132 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
133 conforming to older POSIX versions.
135 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
138 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
144 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
149 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
151 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
153 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
154 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
155 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
157 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
158 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
159 problematic usages. These include:
161 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
162 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
163 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
164 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
165 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
166 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
167 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
168 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
169 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
171 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
172 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
174 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
175 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
176 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
177 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
179 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
180 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
181 between binary and text files.
183 The following programs now always use text input/output:
187 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
191 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
192 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
195 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
197 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
198 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
200 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
201 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
202 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
204 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
206 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
208 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
209 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
210 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
214 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
216 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
217 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
219 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
220 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
221 blocks until F contains N blocks.
225 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
226 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
230 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
231 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
232 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
236 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
237 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
241 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
243 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
245 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
249 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
250 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
251 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
253 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
254 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
255 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
256 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
257 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
259 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
263 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
264 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
265 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
267 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
269 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
270 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
271 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
272 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
274 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
276 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
277 rather than silently wrapping around.
279 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
280 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
282 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
283 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
285 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
286 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
287 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
290 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
292 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
294 ** Improved robustness
296 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
297 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
298 no matter how large the result.
300 ** Improved portability
302 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
303 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
305 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
307 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
308 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
309 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
311 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
312 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
316 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
317 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
319 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
321 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
322 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
323 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
324 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
326 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
327 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
329 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
330 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
331 categories if not specified by dircolors.
333 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
335 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
336 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
338 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
339 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
341 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
343 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
344 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
346 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
347 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
349 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
350 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
351 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
353 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
355 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
357 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
361 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
363 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
364 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
365 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
367 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
368 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
370 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
371 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
372 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
374 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
375 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
377 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
378 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
379 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
380 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
382 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
383 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
385 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
386 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
387 the file system does not support it.
389 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
391 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
392 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
394 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
396 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
397 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
399 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
400 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
401 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
402 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
404 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
405 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
408 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
409 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
410 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
411 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
413 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
414 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
415 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
416 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
418 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
419 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
421 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
423 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
424 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
425 reporting incorrect results.
429 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
430 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
432 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
435 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
437 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
438 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
440 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
441 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
443 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
446 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
447 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
448 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
449 the file name does not look like a page range.
451 printf has several changes:
453 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
454 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
456 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
457 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
458 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
460 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
461 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
464 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
465 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
467 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
468 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
470 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
472 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
473 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
475 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
477 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
479 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
480 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
481 when first encountering the directory.
485 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
486 output; POSIX requires this.
488 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
489 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
491 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
493 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
494 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
496 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
497 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
499 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
500 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
501 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
502 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
503 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
504 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
505 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
507 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
508 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
509 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
511 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
512 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
514 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
516 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
518 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
519 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
520 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
521 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
523 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
527 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
528 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
529 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
530 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
531 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
533 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
534 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
535 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
537 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
538 is longer than PATH_MAX.
540 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
541 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
543 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
544 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
545 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
546 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
547 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
549 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
550 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
552 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
553 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
555 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
557 nocreat do not create the output file
558 excl fail if the output file already exists
559 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
560 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
562 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
564 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
565 direct use direct I/O for data
566 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
567 sync likewise, but also for metadata
568 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
569 nofollow do not follow symlinks
570 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
572 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
574 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
575 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
578 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
579 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
580 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
581 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
582 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
583 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
585 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
586 list of NUL-terminated file names.
588 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
591 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
593 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
595 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
596 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
598 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
599 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
600 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
602 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
603 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
604 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
606 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
608 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
609 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
611 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
612 for compatibility with bash.
614 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
616 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
617 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
618 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
619 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
621 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
622 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
624 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
626 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
627 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
628 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
630 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
633 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
635 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
636 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
637 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
638 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
639 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
640 an offset, not as a file name.
642 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
643 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
645 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
646 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
648 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
649 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
651 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
652 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
653 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
655 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
656 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
658 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
659 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
663 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
665 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
667 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
671 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
672 or more arguments between partitions.
674 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
675 holes in the destination.
677 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
678 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
679 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
680 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
681 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
682 terminates immediately.
684 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
686 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
688 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
689 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
690 not the empty string.
692 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
693 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
697 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
698 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
699 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
702 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
709 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
713 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
714 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
716 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
717 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
719 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
720 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
721 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
724 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
728 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
729 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
731 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
732 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
734 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
735 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
736 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
738 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
740 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
743 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
745 ** Configuration option
747 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
748 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
752 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
753 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
757 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
758 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
759 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
762 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
763 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
764 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
765 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
766 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
767 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
768 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
771 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
775 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
776 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
777 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
779 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
780 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
782 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
784 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
785 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
786 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
787 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
789 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
791 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
792 not just the ones that reference directories
794 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
795 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
797 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
798 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
799 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
801 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
802 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
803 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
804 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
805 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
806 ragged when a datum was too wide.
808 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
813 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
814 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
816 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
818 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
820 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
822 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
823 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
825 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
826 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
828 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
830 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
834 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
836 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
838 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
839 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
840 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
841 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
842 resolution is the best we can do right now.
844 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
845 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
847 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
848 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
850 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
851 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
853 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
854 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
855 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
859 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
860 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
861 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
862 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
863 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
864 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
865 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
866 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
867 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
868 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
869 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
870 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
871 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
872 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
874 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
876 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
877 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
879 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
881 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
883 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
884 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
886 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
888 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
889 without a trailing newline.
891 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
892 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
894 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
897 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
901 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
903 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
905 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
906 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
907 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
908 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
910 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
912 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
913 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
914 be printed without leading spaces.
916 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
917 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
922 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
923 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
924 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
926 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
928 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
929 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
931 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
932 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
934 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
935 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
937 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
939 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
941 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
943 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
944 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
946 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
948 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
950 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
951 byte offsets are specified.
954 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
957 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
960 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
961 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
962 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
963 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
964 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
965 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
966 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
967 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
968 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
969 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
970 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
971 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
972 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
973 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
974 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
975 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
976 directory where M has write access.
977 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
978 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
979 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
982 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
983 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
984 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
985 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
986 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
987 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
988 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
989 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
990 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
991 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
992 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
993 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
994 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
995 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
996 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
997 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
998 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
999 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1000 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1001 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1002 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1003 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1004 appeared one additional time.
1006 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1007 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1008 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1009 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1012 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1013 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1014 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1015 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1016 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1017 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1018 if there were more than 338.
1020 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1021 - false --help now exits nonzero
1024 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1025 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1026 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1027 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1030 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1031 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1032 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1033 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1034 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1037 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1038 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1039 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1040 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1041 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1042 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1043 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1046 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1047 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1048 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1049 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1050 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1051 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1053 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1054 under certain unusual conditions
1055 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1056 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1059 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1060 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1061 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1062 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1063 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1064 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1065 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1066 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1067 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1068 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1069 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1070 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1071 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1072 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1073 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1074 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1077 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1078 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1081 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1082 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1083 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1084 involving hard-linked directories
1085 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1086 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1087 character-special and block files
1090 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1091 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1092 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1093 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1094 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1095 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1096 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1097 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1098 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1100 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1101 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1102 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1103 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1104 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1105 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1106 specified on the command line.
1107 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1108 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1109 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1110 the first file untouched.
1111 * readlink: new program
1112 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1113 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1114 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1115 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1116 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1117 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1120 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1121 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1122 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1123 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1124 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1125 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1126 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1127 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1128 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1129 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1130 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1131 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1133 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1134 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1135 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1137 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1138 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1139 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1140 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1141 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1142 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1143 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1144 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1147 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1148 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1151 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1152 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1153 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1154 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1155 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1156 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1157 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1160 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1161 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1163 ========================================================================
1164 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1165 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1168 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1170 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1171 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1172 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1173 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1174 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1175 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1176 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1177 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1178 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1179 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1180 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1181 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1183 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1184 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1185 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1186 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1188 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1191 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1193 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1194 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1195 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1196 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1197 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1198 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1199 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1202 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1203 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1204 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1205 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1206 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1207 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1208 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1209 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1210 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1211 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1212 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1213 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1214 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1215 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1216 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1217 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1219 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1220 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1222 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1223 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1224 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1225 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1226 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1227 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1229 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1230 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1231 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1232 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1233 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1234 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1235 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1237 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1238 the source files in the following example:
1239 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1240 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1241 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1242 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1243 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1244 links between source files with --preserve=links
1245 * cp accepts new options:
1246 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1247 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1248 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1249 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1250 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1251 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1252 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1253 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1254 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1256 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1257 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1258 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1259 even though it's older than dest.
1260 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1261 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1262 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1263 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1264 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1266 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1267 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1268 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1269 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1270 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1271 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1272 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1274 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1275 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1276 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1278 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1279 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1280 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1281 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1282 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1283 This is the default.
1285 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1286 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1287 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1288 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1289 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1291 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1294 ========================================================================
1295 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1296 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1299 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1300 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1302 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1303 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1304 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1305 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1306 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1308 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1309 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1310 that specifies a non-directory
1313 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1314 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1315 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1316 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1317 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1318 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1319 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1320 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1321 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1322 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1323 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1324 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1325 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1326 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1327 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1328 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1329 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1330 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1331 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1332 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1333 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1334 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1335 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1336 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1338 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1339 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1340 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1342 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1344 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1345 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1347 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1348 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1349 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1350 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1351 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1353 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1354 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1355 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1356 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1357 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1359 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1361 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1362 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1363 * still more portability fixes
1364 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1365 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1367 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1369 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1371 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1373 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1374 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1375 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1376 there is any time remaining
1377 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1379 ========================================================================
1380 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1381 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1383 This package began as the union of the following:
1384 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
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