1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
8 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
10 ** Changes in behavior
12 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
13 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
15 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
16 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
17 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive. To obtain
18 the nanoseconds portion corresponding to %X, you may now use %:X.
19 I.e., to print the floating point number of seconds using maximum
20 precision, use this format string: %X.%:X. Likewise for %Y, %Z and %W.
22 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
23 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
24 the same way: %W now expands to seconds since the epoch (or 0 when
25 not supported), and %:W expands to the nanoseconds portion, or to
29 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
33 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
34 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
35 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
37 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
38 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
40 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
41 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
42 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
44 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
45 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
47 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
48 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
50 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
51 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
52 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
54 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
55 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
56 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
57 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
61 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
62 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
64 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
67 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
68 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
70 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
72 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
73 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
74 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
76 ** Changes in behavior
78 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
79 rather than its aliased target.
81 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
82 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
83 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
85 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
86 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
87 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
88 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
89 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
90 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
91 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
92 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
94 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
96 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
98 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
99 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
102 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
103 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
104 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
105 control like taskset for example.
107 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
109 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
110 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
111 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
112 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
113 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
114 includes %C when context information is available.
116 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
117 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
118 rather than a file system attribute.
120 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
121 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
122 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
123 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
125 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
126 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
127 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
129 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
130 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
131 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
134 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
138 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
139 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
141 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
143 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
144 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
146 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
147 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
148 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
149 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
151 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
152 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
153 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
157 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
158 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
160 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
161 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
162 duration after the initial signal was sent.
164 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
165 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
166 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
167 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
168 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
169 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
170 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
171 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
172 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
174 ** Changes in behavior
176 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
177 sequence when it would be a no-op.
179 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
180 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
183 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
187 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
188 of available processors, which may not have been the case
189 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
190 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
194 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
195 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
197 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
198 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
199 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
200 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
202 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
203 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
204 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
207 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
211 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
212 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
213 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
215 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
216 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
217 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
219 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
220 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
222 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
223 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
224 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
225 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
227 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
228 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
229 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
231 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
232 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
233 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
234 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
236 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
237 renamed-aside and then recreated.
238 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
240 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
241 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
242 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
243 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
245 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
246 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
247 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
249 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
250 processes will not intersperse their output.
251 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
254 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
258 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
259 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
261 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
262 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
264 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
265 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
266 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
267 the presence of the empty string argument.
268 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
270 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
271 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
272 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
273 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
275 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
276 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
278 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
279 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
280 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
282 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
283 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
284 and with a malicious user on the same system
285 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
286 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
289 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
293 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
294 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
295 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
297 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
298 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
299 offending directory and all "contents."
301 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
302 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
303 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
305 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
306 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
307 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
309 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
310 processes will not intersperse their output.
311 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
312 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
314 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
315 output the name of the file to stdout.
316 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
318 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
319 call fails with errno == EACCES.
320 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
322 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
323 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
326 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
327 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
328 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
330 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
331 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
332 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
333 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
334 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
335 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
337 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
338 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
339 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
340 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
342 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
343 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
345 ** Changes in behavior
347 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
348 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
349 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
350 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
351 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
353 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
354 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
355 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
356 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
358 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
360 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
361 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
362 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
363 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
364 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
368 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
372 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
373 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
375 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
376 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
378 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
379 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
380 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
382 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
383 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
386 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
390 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
391 when the source file doesn't have write access.
392 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
394 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
395 to accommodate leap seconds.
396 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
398 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
399 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
400 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
402 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
404 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
405 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
406 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
408 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
409 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
410 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
411 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
412 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
416 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
417 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
418 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
419 directory or a symlink to a directory.
421 ** Changes in behavior
423 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
424 environment variable is set.
426 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
427 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
428 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
432 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
433 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
434 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
435 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
437 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
438 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
439 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
440 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
444 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
445 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
446 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
448 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
449 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
450 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
451 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
452 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
453 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
456 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
457 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
460 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
464 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
465 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
466 and libraries tested at configure time.
467 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
469 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
470 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
472 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
473 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
475 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
476 printing a summary to stderr.
477 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
479 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
480 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
481 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
483 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
484 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
486 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
487 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
488 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
489 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
491 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
492 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
493 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
494 which is relatively unusual.
495 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
497 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
498 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
499 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
500 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
501 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
502 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
503 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
507 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
508 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
509 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
510 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
511 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
515 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
516 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
518 ** Changes in behavior
520 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
521 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
522 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
523 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
524 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
527 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
531 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
532 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
534 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
535 before data copying has started.
537 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
538 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
540 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
541 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
542 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
543 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
545 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
546 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
547 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
548 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
550 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
555 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
556 for its standard streams.
558 ** Changes in behavior
560 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
561 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
562 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
563 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
564 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
565 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
567 ** Deprecated options
569 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
570 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
574 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
576 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
577 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
580 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
582 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
583 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
585 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
586 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
589 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
593 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
594 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
595 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
596 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
598 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
599 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
600 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
601 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
602 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
607 make check: two tests have been corrected
611 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
612 inherited from gnulib.
615 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
619 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
620 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
621 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
622 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
624 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
625 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
627 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
629 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
630 systems without xattr support.
632 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
633 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
634 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
636 ** Changes in behavior
638 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
639 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
640 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
641 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
643 ** Improved robustness
645 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
646 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
647 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
648 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
649 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
650 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
651 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
652 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
653 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
657 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
658 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
660 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
661 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
662 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
663 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
664 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
667 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
671 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
672 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
673 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
677 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
678 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
679 data was read, or on process exit.
680 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
682 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
683 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
684 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
685 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
687 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
688 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
689 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
690 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
692 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
693 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
695 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
696 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
698 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
699 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
700 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
702 ** Changes in behavior
704 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
705 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
706 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
708 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
709 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
711 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
712 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
713 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
716 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
720 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
722 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
723 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
724 install: Never copies xattrs
726 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
727 from overwriting any existing destination file
729 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
730 mode where this feature is available.
732 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
733 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
734 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
735 do not modify the destination at all.
737 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
739 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
743 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
744 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
746 cp uses much less memory in some situations
748 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
749 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
751 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
752 processing the first file name
754 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
755 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
756 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
757 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
759 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
760 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
762 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
763 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
766 ** Changes in behavior
768 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
769 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
771 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
772 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
773 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
775 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
776 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
778 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
780 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
781 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
782 is still marked with a '+'.
785 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
789 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
790 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
794 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
795 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
796 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
797 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
798 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
799 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
801 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
802 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
804 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
805 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
807 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
809 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
810 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
811 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
813 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
814 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
816 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
817 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
818 used to factor large numbers.
820 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
823 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
825 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
827 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
828 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
830 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
831 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
832 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
833 maximum command-line (argv) length.
835 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
836 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
837 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
839 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
840 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
844 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
846 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
847 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
849 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
850 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
852 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
854 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
855 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
859 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
860 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
861 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
863 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
865 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
866 no matter how many files are in a given directory
868 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
869 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
870 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
872 ** Changes in behavior
874 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
875 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
878 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
882 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
884 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
885 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
886 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
888 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
889 with no USERNAME argument.
891 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
892 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
893 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
895 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
896 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
897 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
898 number of fields for some inputs.
900 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
901 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
903 ** Changes in behavior
905 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
906 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
909 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
913 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
915 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
916 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
917 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
918 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
920 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
921 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
923 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
924 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
926 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
927 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
929 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
930 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
931 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
932 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
934 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
935 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
936 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
937 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
938 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
939 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
941 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
942 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
944 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
945 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
946 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
948 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
949 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
951 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
952 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
954 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
955 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
956 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
957 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
959 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
960 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
962 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
963 in more cases when a directory is empty.
965 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
966 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
967 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
971 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
972 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
974 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
975 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
976 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
977 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
981 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
982 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
984 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
986 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
990 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
991 which have negative errno values.
995 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
999 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1003 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1004 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1007 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1011 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1012 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1013 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1015 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1016 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1017 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1018 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1022 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1023 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1024 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1025 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1028 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1032 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1034 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1035 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1036 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1039 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1043 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1044 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1046 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1048 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1050 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1052 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1056 ** Changes in behavior
1058 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1059 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1061 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1062 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1064 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1065 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1066 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1070 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1071 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1072 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1073 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1074 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1075 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1076 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1077 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1078 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1079 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1080 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1082 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1083 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1084 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1087 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1090 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1091 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1092 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1094 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1095 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1096 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1099 ** New build options
1101 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1102 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1103 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1104 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1106 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1107 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1108 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1109 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1110 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1111 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1112 of "make check" fail.
1114 ** Remove deprecated options
1116 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1117 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1118 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1119 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1120 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1122 ** Improved robustness
1124 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1125 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1126 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1127 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1128 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1129 loss of the contents of a/f.
1131 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1132 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1136 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1137 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1138 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1140 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1141 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1142 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1143 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1145 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1146 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1147 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1148 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1149 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1150 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1151 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1152 destination is a symlink.
1154 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1156 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1157 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1159 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1160 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1162 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1164 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1165 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1167 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1168 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1170 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1173 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1174 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1176 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1177 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1179 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1180 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1181 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1182 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1184 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1185 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1186 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1188 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1189 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1190 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1192 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1193 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1194 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1195 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1197 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1198 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1199 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1201 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1202 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1204 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1205 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1207 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1209 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1210 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1211 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1213 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1214 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1216 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1217 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1219 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1220 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1222 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1223 [present in the original version]
1226 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1230 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1232 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1233 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1234 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1236 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1237 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1239 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1243 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1244 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1246 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1247 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1249 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1250 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1252 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1253 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1254 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1255 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1256 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1257 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1259 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1260 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1263 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1264 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1266 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1269 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1270 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1271 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1273 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1274 directory is unreadable.
1276 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1277 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1278 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1280 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1281 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1282 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1283 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1284 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1287 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1288 Before it would print nothing.
1290 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1292 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1293 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1294 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1295 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1296 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1297 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1298 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1299 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1301 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1305 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1306 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1307 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1309 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1310 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1311 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1312 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1315 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1319 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1320 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1321 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1322 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1323 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1324 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1325 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1327 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1328 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1329 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1330 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1331 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1332 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1333 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1334 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1336 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1337 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1338 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1341 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1345 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1346 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1348 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1349 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1350 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1352 ** Improved robustness
1354 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1355 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1356 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1359 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1363 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1364 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1365 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1366 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1367 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1369 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1373 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1376 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1380 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1381 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1382 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1383 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1385 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1386 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1388 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1389 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1390 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1393 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1395 ** Improved robustness
1397 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1398 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1400 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1401 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1402 or NFS-mounted partition.
1404 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1405 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1409 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1410 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1411 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1412 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1413 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1414 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1416 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1417 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1419 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1420 or neglect to report file removal.
1422 For the "groups" command:
1424 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1425 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1427 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1429 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1431 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1435 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1436 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1439 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1441 ** Changes in behavior
1443 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1444 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1445 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1446 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1448 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1449 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1450 a final `./' or `../' component.
1452 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1453 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1454 this only for pipes.
1456 ** Infrastructure changes
1458 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1459 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1460 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1461 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1465 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1466 name is "." or "..".
1468 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1469 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1470 dirent.d_type support.
1472 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1473 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1475 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1476 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1477 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1478 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1481 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1483 ** Changes in behavior
1485 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1489 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1490 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1494 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1495 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1496 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1498 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1499 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1501 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1502 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1504 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1506 ** Improved robustness
1508 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1509 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1510 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1512 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1513 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1516 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1517 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1519 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1520 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1522 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1523 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1525 ** Changes in behavior
1527 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1528 where the two are distinct.
1530 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1531 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1532 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1533 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1534 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1535 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1536 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1537 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1538 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1539 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1540 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1541 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1542 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1543 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1544 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1545 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1546 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1548 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1549 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1550 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1552 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1553 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1554 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1555 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1558 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1559 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1563 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1564 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1565 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1566 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1568 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1569 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1570 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1572 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1573 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1574 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1575 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1576 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1579 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1580 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1582 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1583 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1584 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1585 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1587 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1588 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1589 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1591 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1592 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1593 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1594 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1596 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1597 and sticky) with the -m option.
1599 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1600 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1601 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1602 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1603 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1605 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1606 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1608 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1612 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1613 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1614 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1615 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1617 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1619 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1621 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1622 silently ignoring one of them.
1624 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1625 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1626 containing this change was 5.92.
1628 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1629 automatically newline terminated.
1631 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1632 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1633 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1634 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1637 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1638 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1639 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1642 ** Scheduled for removal
1644 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1645 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1647 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1648 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1649 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1650 command to unlink a directory.
1652 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1653 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1654 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1655 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1659 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1660 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1661 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1662 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1663 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1664 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1668 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1669 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1671 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1673 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1674 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1675 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1677 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1678 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1681 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1682 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1684 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1685 list directories before files.
1687 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1688 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1689 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1690 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1693 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1695 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1697 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1698 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1699 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1701 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1702 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1706 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1707 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1708 usually printing nothing.
1710 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1712 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1713 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1714 them with hard-linked directories.
1716 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1717 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1718 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1720 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1721 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1722 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1724 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1727 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1728 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1730 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1731 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1733 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1734 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1736 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1737 all command-line arguments.
1739 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1741 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1743 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1744 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1746 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1748 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1749 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1750 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1751 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1752 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1754 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1755 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1757 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1758 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1759 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1760 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1762 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1764 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1768 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1769 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1771 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1772 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1774 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1775 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1777 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1778 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1780 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1781 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1783 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1785 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1786 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1787 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1790 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1792 ** Build-related bug fixes
1794 installing .mo files would fail
1797 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1801 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1803 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1806 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1810 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1811 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1815 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1817 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1818 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1820 ** Deprecated options
1822 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1823 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1825 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1829 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1831 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1832 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1833 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1834 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1836 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1839 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1845 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1850 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1852 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1854 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1855 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1856 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1858 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1859 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1860 problematic usages. These include:
1862 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1863 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1864 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1865 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1866 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1867 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1868 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1869 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1870 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1872 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1873 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1875 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1876 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1877 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1878 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1880 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1881 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1882 between binary and text files.
1884 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1888 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1892 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1893 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1895 head tac tail tee tr
1896 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1898 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1899 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1901 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1902 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1903 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1905 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1907 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1909 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1910 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1911 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1915 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1917 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1918 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1920 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1921 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1922 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1926 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1927 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1931 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1932 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1933 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1937 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1938 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1942 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1944 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1946 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1950 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1951 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1952 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1954 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1955 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1956 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1957 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1958 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1960 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1964 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1965 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1966 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1968 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1970 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1971 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1972 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1973 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1975 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1977 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1978 rather than silently wrapping around.
1980 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1981 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1983 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1984 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1986 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1987 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1988 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1989 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1991 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1993 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1995 ** Improved robustness
1997 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1998 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1999 no matter how large the result.
2001 ** Improved portability
2003 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2004 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2006 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2008 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2009 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2010 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2012 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2013 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2017 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2018 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2020 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2022 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2023 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2024 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2025 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2027 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2028 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2030 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2031 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2032 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2034 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2036 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2037 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2039 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2040 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2042 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2044 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2045 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2047 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2048 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2050 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2051 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2052 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2054 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2056 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2058 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2062 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2064 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2065 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2066 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2068 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2069 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2071 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2072 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2073 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2075 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2076 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2078 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2079 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2080 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2081 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2083 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2084 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2086 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2087 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2088 the file system does not support it.
2090 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2092 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2093 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2095 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2097 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2098 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2100 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2101 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2102 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2103 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2105 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2106 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2109 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2110 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2111 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2112 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2114 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2115 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2116 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2117 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2119 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2120 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2122 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2124 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2125 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2126 reporting incorrect results.
2130 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2131 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2133 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2136 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2138 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2139 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2141 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2142 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2144 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2147 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2148 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2149 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2150 the file name does not look like a page range.
2152 printf has several changes:
2154 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2155 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2157 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2158 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2159 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2161 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2162 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2165 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2166 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2168 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2169 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2171 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2173 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2174 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2176 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2178 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2180 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2181 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2182 when first encountering the directory.
2186 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2187 output; POSIX requires this.
2189 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2190 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2192 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2194 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2195 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2197 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2198 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2200 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2201 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2202 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2203 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2204 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2205 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2206 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2208 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2209 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2210 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2212 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2213 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2215 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2217 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2219 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2220 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2221 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2222 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2224 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2228 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2229 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2230 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2231 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2232 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2234 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2235 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2236 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2238 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2239 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2241 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2242 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2244 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2245 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2246 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2247 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2248 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2250 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2251 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2253 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2254 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2256 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2258 nocreat do not create the output file
2259 excl fail if the output file already exists
2260 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2261 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2263 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2265 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2266 direct use direct I/O for data
2267 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2268 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2269 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2270 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2271 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2273 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2275 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2276 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2279 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2280 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2281 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2282 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2283 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2284 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2286 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2287 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2289 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2292 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2294 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2296 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2297 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2299 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2300 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2301 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2303 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2304 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2305 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2307 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2309 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2310 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2312 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2313 for compatibility with bash.
2315 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2317 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2318 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2319 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2320 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2322 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2323 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2325 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2326 ls supports TABSIZE.
2327 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2328 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2329 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2331 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2334 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2336 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2337 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2338 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2339 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2340 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2341 an offset, not as a file name.
2343 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2344 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2346 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2347 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2349 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2350 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2352 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2353 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2354 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2356 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2357 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2359 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2360 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2364 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2366 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2368 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2372 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2373 or more arguments between partitions.
2375 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2376 holes in the destination.
2378 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2379 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2380 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2381 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2382 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2383 terminates immediately.
2385 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2387 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2389 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2390 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2391 not the empty string.
2393 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2394 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2398 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2399 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2400 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2403 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2410 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2414 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2415 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2417 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2418 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2420 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2421 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2422 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2425 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2429 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2430 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2432 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2433 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2435 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2436 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2437 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2439 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2441 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2444 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2446 ** Configuration option
2448 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2449 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2453 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2454 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2458 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2459 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2460 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2463 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2464 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2465 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2466 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2467 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2468 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2469 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2472 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2476 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2477 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2478 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2480 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2481 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2483 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2485 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2486 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2487 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2488 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2490 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2492 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2493 not just the ones that reference directories
2495 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2496 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2498 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2499 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2500 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2502 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2503 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2504 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2505 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2506 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2507 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2509 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2514 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2515 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2517 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2519 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2521 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2523 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2524 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2526 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2527 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2529 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2531 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2535 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2537 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2539 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2540 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2541 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2542 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2543 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2545 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2546 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2548 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2549 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2551 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2552 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2554 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2555 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2556 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2560 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2561 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2562 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2563 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2564 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2565 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2566 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2567 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2568 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2569 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2570 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2571 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2572 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2573 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2575 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2577 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2578 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2580 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2582 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2584 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2585 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2587 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2589 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2590 without a trailing newline.
2592 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2593 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2595 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2598 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2602 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2604 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2606 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2607 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2608 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2609 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2611 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2613 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2614 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2615 be printed without leading spaces.
2617 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2618 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2623 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2624 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2625 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2627 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2629 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2630 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2632 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2633 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2635 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2636 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2638 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2640 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2642 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2644 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2645 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2647 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2649 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2651 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2652 byte offsets are specified.
2655 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2658 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2661 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2662 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2663 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2664 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2665 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2666 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2667 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2668 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2669 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2670 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2671 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2672 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2673 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2674 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2675 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2676 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2677 directory where M has write access.
2678 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2679 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2680 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2683 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2684 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2685 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2686 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2687 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2688 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2689 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2690 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2691 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2692 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2693 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2694 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2695 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2696 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2697 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2698 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2699 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2700 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2701 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2702 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2703 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2704 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2705 appeared one additional time.
2707 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2708 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2709 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2710 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2713 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2714 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2715 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2716 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2717 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2718 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2719 if there were more than 338.
2721 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2722 - false --help now exits nonzero
2725 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2726 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2727 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2728 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2731 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2732 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2733 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2734 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2735 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2738 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2739 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2740 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2741 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2742 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2743 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2744 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2747 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2748 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2749 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2750 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2751 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2752 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2754 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2755 under certain unusual conditions
2756 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2757 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2760 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2761 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2762 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2763 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2764 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2765 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2766 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2767 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2768 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2769 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2770 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2771 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2772 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2773 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2774 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2775 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2778 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2779 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2782 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2783 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2784 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2785 involving hard-linked directories
2786 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2787 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2788 character-special and block files
2791 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2792 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2793 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2794 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2795 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2796 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2797 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2798 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2799 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2801 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2802 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2803 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2804 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2805 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2806 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2807 specified on the command line.
2808 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2809 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2810 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2811 the first file untouched.
2812 * readlink: new program
2813 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2814 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2815 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2816 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2817 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2818 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2821 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2822 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2823 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2824 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2825 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2826 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2827 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2828 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2829 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2830 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2831 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2832 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2834 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2835 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2836 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2838 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2839 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2840 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2841 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2842 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2843 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2844 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2845 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2848 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2849 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2852 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2853 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2854 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2855 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2856 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2857 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2858 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2861 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2862 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2864 ========================================================================
2865 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2866 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2869 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2871 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2872 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2873 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2874 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2875 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2876 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2877 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2878 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2879 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2880 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2881 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2882 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2884 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2885 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2886 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2887 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2889 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2892 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2894 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2895 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2896 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2897 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2898 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2899 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2900 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2903 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2904 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2905 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2906 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2907 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2908 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2909 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2910 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2911 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2912 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2913 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2914 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2915 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2916 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2917 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2918 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2920 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2921 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2923 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2924 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2925 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2926 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2927 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2928 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2930 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2931 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2932 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2933 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2934 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2935 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2936 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2938 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2939 the source files in the following example:
2940 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2941 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2942 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2943 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2944 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2945 links between source files with --preserve=links
2946 * cp accepts new options:
2947 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2948 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2949 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2950 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2951 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2952 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2953 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2954 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2955 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2957 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2958 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2959 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2960 even though it's older than dest.
2961 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2962 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2963 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2964 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2965 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2967 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2968 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2969 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2970 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2971 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2972 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2973 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2975 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2976 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2977 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2979 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2980 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2981 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2982 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2983 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2984 This is the default.
2986 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2987 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2988 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2989 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2990 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2992 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2995 ========================================================================
2996 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2997 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3000 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3001 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3003 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3004 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3005 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3006 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3007 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3009 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3010 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3011 that specifies a non-directory
3014 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3015 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3016 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3017 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3018 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3019 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3020 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3021 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3022 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3023 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3024 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3025 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3026 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3027 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3028 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3029 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3030 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3031 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3032 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3033 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3034 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3035 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3036 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3037 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3039 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3040 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3041 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3043 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3045 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3046 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3048 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3049 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3050 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3051 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3052 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3054 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3055 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3056 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3057 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3058 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3060 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3062 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3063 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3064 * still more portability fixes
3065 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3066 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3068 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3070 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3072 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3074 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3075 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3076 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3077 there is any time remaining
3078 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3080 ========================================================================
3081 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3082 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3084 This package began as the union of the following:
3085 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3087 ========================================================================
3089 Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3091 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3092 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3093 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3094 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3095 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3096 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.