1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
6 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
10 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
11 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
12 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
15 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
19 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
20 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
22 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
23 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
25 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
26 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
28 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
29 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
30 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
31 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
33 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
34 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
36 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
37 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
38 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
40 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
42 ** Changes in behavior
44 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
45 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
46 to the number of available processors.
50 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
53 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
57 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
58 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
59 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
60 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
62 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
63 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
64 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
66 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
67 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
69 ** Changes in behavior
71 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
72 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
74 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
75 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
76 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
77 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
78 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
79 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
81 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
82 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
83 the same way as the others.
86 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
90 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
91 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
92 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
94 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
95 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
97 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
98 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
99 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
101 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
102 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
104 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
105 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
107 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
108 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
109 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
111 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
112 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
113 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
114 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
118 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
119 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
121 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
124 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
125 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
127 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
129 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
130 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
131 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
133 ** Changes in behavior
135 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
136 rather than its aliased target.
138 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
139 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
140 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
142 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
143 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
144 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
145 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
146 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
147 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
148 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
149 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
151 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
153 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
155 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
156 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
159 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
160 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
161 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
162 control like taskset for example.
164 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
166 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
167 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
168 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
169 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
170 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
171 includes %C when context information is available.
173 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
174 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
175 rather than a file system attribute.
177 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
178 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
179 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
180 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
182 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
183 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
184 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
186 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
187 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
188 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
191 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
195 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
196 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
198 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
200 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
201 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
203 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
204 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
205 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
206 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
208 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
209 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
210 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
214 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
215 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
217 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
218 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
219 duration after the initial signal was sent.
221 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
222 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
223 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
224 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
225 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
226 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
227 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
228 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
229 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
231 ** Changes in behavior
233 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
234 sequence when it would be a no-op.
236 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
237 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
240 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
244 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
245 of available processors, which may not have been the case
246 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
247 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
251 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
252 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
254 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
255 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
256 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
257 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
259 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
260 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
261 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
264 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
268 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
269 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
270 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
272 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
273 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
274 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
276 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
277 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
279 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
280 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
281 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
282 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
284 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
285 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
286 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
288 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
289 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
290 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
291 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
293 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
294 renamed-aside and then recreated.
295 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
297 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
298 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
299 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
300 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
302 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
303 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
304 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
306 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
307 processes will not intersperse their output.
308 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
311 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
315 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
316 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
318 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
319 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
321 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
322 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
323 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
324 the presence of the empty string argument.
325 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
327 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
328 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
329 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
330 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
332 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
333 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
335 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
336 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
337 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
339 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
340 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
341 and with a malicious user on the same system
342 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
343 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
346 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
350 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
351 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
352 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
354 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
355 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
356 offending directory and all "contents."
358 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
359 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
360 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
362 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
363 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
364 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
366 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
367 processes will not intersperse their output.
368 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
369 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
371 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
372 output the name of the file to stdout.
373 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
375 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
376 call fails with errno == EACCES.
377 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
379 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
380 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
383 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
384 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
385 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
387 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
388 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
389 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
390 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
391 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
392 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
394 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
395 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
396 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
397 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
399 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
400 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
402 ** Changes in behavior
404 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
405 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
406 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
407 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
408 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
410 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
411 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
412 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
413 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
415 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
417 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
418 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
419 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
420 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
421 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
425 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
429 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
430 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
432 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
433 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
435 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
436 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
437 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
439 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
440 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
443 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
447 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
448 when the source file doesn't have write access.
449 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
451 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
452 to accommodate leap seconds.
453 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
455 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
456 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
457 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
459 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
461 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
462 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
463 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
465 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
466 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
467 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
468 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
469 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
473 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
474 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
475 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
476 directory or a symlink to a directory.
478 ** Changes in behavior
480 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
481 environment variable is set.
483 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
484 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
485 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
489 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
490 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
491 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
492 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
494 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
495 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
496 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
497 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
501 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
502 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
503 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
505 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
506 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
507 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
508 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
509 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
510 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
513 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
514 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
517 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
521 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
522 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
523 and libraries tested at configure time.
524 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
526 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
527 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
529 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
530 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
532 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
533 printing a summary to stderr.
534 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
536 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
537 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
538 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
540 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
541 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
543 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
544 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
545 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
546 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
548 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
549 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
550 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
551 which is relatively unusual.
552 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
554 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
555 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
556 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
557 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
558 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
559 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
560 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
564 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
565 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
566 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
567 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
568 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
572 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
573 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
575 ** Changes in behavior
577 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
578 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
579 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
580 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
581 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
584 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
588 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
589 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
591 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
592 before data copying has started.
594 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
595 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
597 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
598 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
599 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
600 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
602 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
603 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
604 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
605 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
607 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
612 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
613 for its standard streams.
615 ** Changes in behavior
617 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
618 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
619 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
620 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
621 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
622 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
624 ** Deprecated options
626 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
627 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
631 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
633 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
634 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
637 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
639 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
640 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
642 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
643 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
646 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
650 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
651 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
652 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
653 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
655 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
656 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
657 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
658 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
659 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
664 make check: two tests have been corrected
668 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
669 inherited from gnulib.
672 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
676 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
677 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
678 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
679 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
681 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
682 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
684 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
686 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
687 systems without xattr support.
689 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
690 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
691 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
693 ** Changes in behavior
695 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
696 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
697 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
698 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
700 ** Improved robustness
702 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
703 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
704 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
705 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
706 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
707 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
708 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
709 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
710 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
714 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
715 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
717 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
718 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
719 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
720 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
721 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
724 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
728 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
729 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
730 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
734 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
735 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
736 data was read, or on process exit.
737 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
739 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
740 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
741 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
742 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
744 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
745 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
746 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
747 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
749 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
750 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
752 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
753 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
755 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
756 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
757 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
759 ** Changes in behavior
761 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
762 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
763 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
765 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
766 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
768 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
769 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
770 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
773 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
777 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
779 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
780 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
781 install: Never copies xattrs
783 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
784 from overwriting any existing destination file
786 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
787 mode where this feature is available.
789 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
790 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
791 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
792 do not modify the destination at all.
794 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
796 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
800 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
801 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
803 cp uses much less memory in some situations
805 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
806 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
808 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
809 processing the first file name
811 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
812 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
813 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
814 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
816 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
817 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
819 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
820 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
823 ** Changes in behavior
825 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
826 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
828 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
829 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
830 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
832 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
833 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
835 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
837 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
838 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
839 is still marked with a '+'.
842 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
846 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
847 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
851 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
852 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
853 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
854 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
855 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
856 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
858 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
859 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
861 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
862 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
864 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
866 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
867 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
868 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
870 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
871 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
873 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
874 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
875 used to factor large numbers.
877 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
880 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
882 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
884 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
885 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
887 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
888 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
889 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
890 maximum command-line (argv) length.
892 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
893 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
894 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
896 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
897 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
901 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
903 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
904 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
906 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
907 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
909 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
911 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
912 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
916 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
917 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
918 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
920 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
922 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
923 no matter how many files are in a given directory
925 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
926 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
927 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
929 ** Changes in behavior
931 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
932 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
935 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
939 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
941 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
942 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
943 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
945 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
946 with no USERNAME argument.
948 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
949 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
950 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
952 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
953 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
954 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
955 number of fields for some inputs.
957 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
958 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
960 ** Changes in behavior
962 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
963 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
966 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
970 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
972 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
973 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
974 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
975 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
977 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
978 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
980 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
981 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
983 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
984 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
986 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
987 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
988 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
989 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
991 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
992 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
993 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
994 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
995 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
996 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
998 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
999 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1001 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1002 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1003 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1005 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1006 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1008 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1009 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1011 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1012 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1013 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1014 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1016 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1017 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1019 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1020 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1022 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1023 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1024 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1028 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1029 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1031 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1032 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1033 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1034 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1038 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1039 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1041 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1043 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1047 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1048 which have negative errno values.
1052 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1056 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1060 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1061 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1064 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1068 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1069 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1070 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1072 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1073 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1074 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1075 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1079 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1080 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1081 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1082 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1085 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1089 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1091 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1092 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1093 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1096 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1100 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1101 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1103 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1105 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1107 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1109 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1113 ** Changes in behavior
1115 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1116 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1118 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1119 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1121 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1122 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1123 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1127 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1128 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1129 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1130 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1131 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1132 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1133 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1134 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1135 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1136 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1137 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1139 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1140 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1141 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1144 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1147 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1148 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1149 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1151 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1152 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1153 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1156 ** New build options
1158 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1159 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1160 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1161 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1163 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1164 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1165 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1166 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1167 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1168 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1169 of "make check" fail.
1171 ** Remove deprecated options
1173 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1174 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1175 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1176 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1177 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1179 ** Improved robustness
1181 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1182 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1183 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1184 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1185 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1186 loss of the contents of a/f.
1188 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1189 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1193 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1194 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1195 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1197 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1198 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1199 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1200 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1202 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1203 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1204 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1205 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1206 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1207 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1208 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1209 destination is a symlink.
1211 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1213 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1214 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1216 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1217 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1219 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1221 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1222 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1224 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1225 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1227 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1230 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1231 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1233 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1234 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1236 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1237 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1238 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1239 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1241 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1242 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1243 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1245 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1246 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1247 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1249 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1250 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1251 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1252 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1254 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1255 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1256 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1258 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1259 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1261 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1262 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1264 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1266 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1267 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1268 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1270 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1271 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1273 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1274 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1276 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1277 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1279 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1280 [present in the original version]
1283 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1287 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1289 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1290 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1291 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1293 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1294 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1296 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1300 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1301 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1303 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1304 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1306 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1307 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1309 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1310 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1311 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1312 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1313 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1314 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1316 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1317 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1320 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1321 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1323 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1326 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1327 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1328 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1330 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1331 directory is unreadable.
1333 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1334 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1335 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1337 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1338 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1339 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1340 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1341 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1344 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1345 Before it would print nothing.
1347 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1349 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1350 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1351 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1352 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1353 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1354 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1355 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1356 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1358 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1362 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1363 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1364 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1366 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1367 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1368 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1369 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1372 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1376 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1377 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1378 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1379 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1380 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1381 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1382 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1384 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1385 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1386 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1387 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1388 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1389 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1390 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1391 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1393 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1394 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1395 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1398 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1402 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1403 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1405 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1406 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1407 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1409 ** Improved robustness
1411 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1412 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1413 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1416 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1420 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1421 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1422 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1423 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1424 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1426 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1430 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1433 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1437 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1438 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1439 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1440 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1442 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1443 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1445 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1446 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1447 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1450 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1452 ** Improved robustness
1454 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1455 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1457 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1458 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1459 or NFS-mounted partition.
1461 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1462 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1466 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1467 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1468 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1469 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1470 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1471 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1473 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1474 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1476 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1477 or neglect to report file removal.
1479 For the "groups" command:
1481 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1482 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1484 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1486 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1488 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1492 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1493 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1496 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1498 ** Changes in behavior
1500 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1501 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1502 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1503 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1505 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1506 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1507 a final `./' or `../' component.
1509 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1510 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1511 this only for pipes.
1513 ** Infrastructure changes
1515 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1516 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1517 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1518 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1522 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1523 name is "." or "..".
1525 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1526 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1527 dirent.d_type support.
1529 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1530 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1532 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1533 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1534 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1535 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1538 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1540 ** Changes in behavior
1542 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1546 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1547 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1551 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1552 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1553 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1555 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1556 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1558 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1559 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1561 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1563 ** Improved robustness
1565 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1566 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1567 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1569 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1570 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1573 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1574 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1576 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1577 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1579 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1580 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1582 ** Changes in behavior
1584 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1585 where the two are distinct.
1587 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1588 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1589 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1590 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1591 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1592 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1593 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1594 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1595 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1596 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1597 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1598 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1599 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1600 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1601 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1602 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1603 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1605 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1606 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1607 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1609 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1610 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1611 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1612 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1615 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1616 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1620 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1621 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1622 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1623 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1625 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1626 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1627 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1629 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1630 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1631 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1632 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1633 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1636 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1637 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1639 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1640 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1641 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1642 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1644 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1645 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1646 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1648 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1649 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1650 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1651 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1653 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1654 and sticky) with the -m option.
1656 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1657 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1658 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1659 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1660 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1662 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1663 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1665 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1669 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1670 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1671 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1672 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1674 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1676 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1678 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1679 silently ignoring one of them.
1681 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1682 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1683 containing this change was 5.92.
1685 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1686 automatically newline terminated.
1688 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1689 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1690 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1691 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1694 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1695 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1696 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1699 ** Scheduled for removal
1701 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1702 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1704 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1705 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1706 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1707 command to unlink a directory.
1709 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1710 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1711 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1712 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1716 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1717 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1718 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1719 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1720 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1721 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1725 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1726 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1728 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1730 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1731 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1732 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1734 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1735 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1738 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1739 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1741 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1742 list directories before files.
1744 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1745 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1746 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1747 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1750 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1752 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1754 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1755 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1756 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1758 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1759 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1763 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1764 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1765 usually printing nothing.
1767 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1769 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1770 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1771 them with hard-linked directories.
1773 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1774 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1775 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1777 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1778 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1779 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1781 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1784 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1785 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1787 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1788 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1790 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1791 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1793 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1794 all command-line arguments.
1796 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1798 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1800 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1801 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1803 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1805 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1806 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1807 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1808 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1809 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1811 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1812 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1814 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1815 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1816 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1817 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1819 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1821 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1825 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1826 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1828 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1829 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1831 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1832 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1834 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1835 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1837 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1838 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1840 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1842 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1843 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1844 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1847 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1849 ** Build-related bug fixes
1851 installing .mo files would fail
1854 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1858 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1860 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1863 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1867 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1868 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1872 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1874 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1875 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1877 ** Deprecated options
1879 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1880 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1882 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1886 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1888 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1889 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1890 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1891 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1893 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1896 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1902 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1907 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1909 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1911 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1912 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1913 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1915 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1916 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1917 problematic usages. These include:
1919 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1920 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1921 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1922 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1923 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1924 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1925 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1926 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1927 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1929 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1930 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1932 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1933 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1934 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1935 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1937 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1938 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1939 between binary and text files.
1941 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1945 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1949 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1950 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1952 head tac tail tee tr
1953 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1955 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1956 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1958 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1959 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1960 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1962 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1964 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1966 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1967 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1968 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1972 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1974 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1975 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1977 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1978 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1979 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1983 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1984 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1988 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1989 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1990 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1994 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1995 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1999 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2001 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2003 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2007 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2008 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2009 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2011 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2012 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2013 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2014 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2015 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2017 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2021 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2022 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2023 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2025 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2027 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2028 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2029 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2030 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2032 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2034 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2035 rather than silently wrapping around.
2037 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2038 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2040 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2041 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2043 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2044 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2045 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2046 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2048 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2050 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2052 ** Improved robustness
2054 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2055 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2056 no matter how large the result.
2058 ** Improved portability
2060 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2061 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2063 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2065 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2066 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2067 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2069 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2070 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2074 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2075 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2077 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2079 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2080 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2081 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2082 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2084 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2085 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2087 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2088 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2089 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2091 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2093 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2094 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2096 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2097 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2099 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2101 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2102 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2104 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2105 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2107 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2108 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2109 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2111 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2113 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2115 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2119 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2121 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2122 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2123 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2125 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2126 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2128 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2129 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2130 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2132 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2133 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2135 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2136 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2137 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2138 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2140 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2141 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2143 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2144 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2145 the file system does not support it.
2147 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2149 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2150 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2152 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2154 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2155 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2157 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2158 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2159 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2160 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2162 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2163 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2166 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2167 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2168 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2169 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2171 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2172 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2173 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2174 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2176 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2177 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2179 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2181 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2182 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2183 reporting incorrect results.
2187 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2188 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2190 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2193 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2195 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2196 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2198 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2199 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2201 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2204 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2205 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2206 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2207 the file name does not look like a page range.
2209 printf has several changes:
2211 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2212 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2214 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2215 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2216 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2218 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2219 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2222 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2223 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2225 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2226 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2228 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2230 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2231 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2233 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2235 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2237 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2238 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2239 when first encountering the directory.
2243 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2244 output; POSIX requires this.
2246 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2247 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2249 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2251 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2252 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2254 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2255 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2257 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2258 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2259 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2260 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2261 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2262 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2263 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2265 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2266 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2267 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2269 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2270 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2272 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2274 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2276 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2277 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2278 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2279 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2281 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2285 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2286 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2287 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2288 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2289 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2291 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2292 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2293 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2295 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2296 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2298 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2299 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2301 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2302 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2303 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2304 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2305 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2307 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2308 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2310 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2311 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2313 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2315 nocreat do not create the output file
2316 excl fail if the output file already exists
2317 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2318 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2320 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2322 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2323 direct use direct I/O for data
2324 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2325 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2326 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2327 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2328 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2330 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2332 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2333 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2336 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2337 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2338 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2339 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2340 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2341 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2343 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2344 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2346 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2349 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2351 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2353 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2354 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2356 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2357 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2358 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2360 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2361 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2362 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2364 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2366 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2367 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2369 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2370 for compatibility with bash.
2372 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2374 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2375 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2376 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2377 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2379 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2380 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2382 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2383 ls supports TABSIZE.
2384 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2385 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2386 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2388 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2391 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2393 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2394 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2395 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2396 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2397 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2398 an offset, not as a file name.
2400 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2401 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2403 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2404 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2406 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2407 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2409 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2410 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2411 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2413 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2414 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2416 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2417 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2421 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2423 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2425 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2429 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2430 or more arguments between partitions.
2432 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2433 holes in the destination.
2435 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2436 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2437 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2438 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2439 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2440 terminates immediately.
2442 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2444 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2446 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2447 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2448 not the empty string.
2450 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2451 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2455 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2456 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2457 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2460 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2467 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2471 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2472 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2474 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2475 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2477 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2478 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2479 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2482 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2486 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2487 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2489 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2490 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2492 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2493 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2494 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2496 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2498 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2501 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2503 ** Configuration option
2505 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2506 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2510 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2511 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2515 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2516 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2517 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2520 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2521 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2522 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2523 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2524 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2525 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2526 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2529 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2533 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2534 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2535 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2537 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2538 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2540 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2542 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2543 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2544 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2545 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2547 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2549 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2550 not just the ones that reference directories
2552 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2553 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2555 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2556 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2557 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2559 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2560 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2561 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2562 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2563 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2564 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2566 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2571 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2572 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2574 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2576 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2578 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2580 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2581 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2583 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2584 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2586 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2588 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2592 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2594 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2596 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2597 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2598 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2599 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2600 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2602 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2603 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2605 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2606 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2608 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2609 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2611 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2612 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2613 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2617 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2618 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2619 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2620 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2621 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2622 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2623 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2624 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2625 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2626 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2627 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2628 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2629 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2630 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2632 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2634 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2635 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2637 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2639 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2641 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2642 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2644 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2646 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2647 without a trailing newline.
2649 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2650 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2652 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2655 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2659 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2661 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2663 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2664 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2665 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2666 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2668 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2670 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2671 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2672 be printed without leading spaces.
2674 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2675 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2680 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2681 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2682 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2684 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2686 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2687 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2689 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2690 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2692 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2693 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2695 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2697 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2699 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2701 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2702 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2704 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2706 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2708 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2709 byte offsets are specified.
2712 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2715 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2718 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2719 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2720 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2721 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2722 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2723 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2724 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2725 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2726 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2727 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2728 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2729 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2730 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2731 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2732 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2733 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2734 directory where M has write access.
2735 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2736 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2737 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2740 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2741 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2742 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2743 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2744 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2745 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2746 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2747 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2748 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2749 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2750 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2751 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2752 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2753 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2754 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2755 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2756 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2757 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2758 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2759 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2760 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2761 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2762 appeared one additional time.
2764 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2765 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2766 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2767 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2770 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2771 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2772 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2773 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2774 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2775 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2776 if there were more than 338.
2778 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2779 - false --help now exits nonzero
2782 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2783 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2784 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2785 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2788 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2789 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2790 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2791 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2792 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2795 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2796 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2797 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2798 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2799 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2800 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2801 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2804 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2805 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2806 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2807 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2808 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2809 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2811 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2812 under certain unusual conditions
2813 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2814 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2817 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2818 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2819 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2820 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2821 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2822 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2823 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2824 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2825 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2826 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2827 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2828 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2829 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2830 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2831 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2832 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2835 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2836 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2839 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2840 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2841 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2842 involving hard-linked directories
2843 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2844 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2845 character-special and block files
2848 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2849 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2850 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2851 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2852 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2853 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2854 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2855 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2856 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2858 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2859 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2860 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2861 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2862 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2863 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2864 specified on the command line.
2865 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2866 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2867 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2868 the first file untouched.
2869 * readlink: new program
2870 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2871 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2872 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2873 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2874 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2875 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2878 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2879 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2880 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2881 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2882 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2883 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2884 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2885 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2886 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2887 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2888 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2889 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2891 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2892 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2893 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2895 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2896 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2897 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2898 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2899 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2900 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2901 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2902 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2905 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2906 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2909 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2910 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2911 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2912 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2913 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2914 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2915 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2918 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2919 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2921 ========================================================================
2922 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2923 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2926 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2928 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2929 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2930 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2931 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2932 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2933 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2934 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2935 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2936 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2937 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2938 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2939 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2941 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2942 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2943 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2944 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2946 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2949 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2951 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2952 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2953 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2954 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2955 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2956 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2957 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2960 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2961 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2962 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2963 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2964 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2965 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2966 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2967 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2968 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2969 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2970 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2971 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2972 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2973 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2974 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2975 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2977 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2978 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2980 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2981 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2982 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2983 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2984 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2985 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2987 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2988 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2989 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2990 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2991 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2992 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2993 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2995 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2996 the source files in the following example:
2997 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2998 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2999 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3000 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3001 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3002 links between source files with --preserve=links
3003 * cp accepts new options:
3004 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3005 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3006 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3007 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3008 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3009 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3010 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3011 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
3012 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3014 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3015 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3016 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3017 even though it's older than dest.
3018 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3019 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3020 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3021 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3022 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3024 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3025 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3026 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3027 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3028 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3029 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3030 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3032 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3033 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3034 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3036 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3037 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3038 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3039 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3040 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3041 This is the default.
3043 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3044 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3045 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3046 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3047 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3049 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3052 ========================================================================
3053 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3054 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3057 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3058 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3060 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3061 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3062 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3063 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3064 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3066 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3067 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3068 that specifies a non-directory
3071 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3072 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3073 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3074 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3075 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3076 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3077 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3078 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3079 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3080 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3081 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3082 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3083 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3084 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3085 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3086 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3087 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3088 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3089 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3090 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3091 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3092 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3093 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3094 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3096 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3097 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3098 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3100 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3102 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3103 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3105 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3106 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3107 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3108 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3109 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3111 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3112 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3113 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3114 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3115 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3117 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3119 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3120 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3121 * still more portability fixes
3122 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3123 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3125 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3127 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3129 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3131 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3132 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3133 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3134 there is any time remaining
3135 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3137 ========================================================================
3138 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3139 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3141 This package began as the union of the following:
3142 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3144 ========================================================================
3146 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3148 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3149 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3150 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3151 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3152 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3153 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.