1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (????-??-??) [beta]
5 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
6 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
7 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
10 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
14 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
15 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
17 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
19 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
21 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
23 ** Programs no longer installed by default
27 ** Changes in behavior
29 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
30 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
32 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
33 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
35 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
36 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
37 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
41 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
42 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
43 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
44 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
45 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
46 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
47 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
48 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
49 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
50 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
51 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
53 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
56 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
57 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
58 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
60 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
61 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
62 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
67 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
68 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
69 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
70 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
72 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
73 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
74 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
75 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
76 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
77 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
80 ** Remove deprecated options
82 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
83 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
84 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
85 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
86 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
88 ** Improved robustness
90 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
91 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
92 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
93 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
94 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
95 loss of the contents of a/f.
97 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
98 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
102 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
103 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
104 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
106 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
107 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
108 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
109 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
111 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
112 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
113 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
114 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
115 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
116 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
117 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
118 destination is a symlink.
120 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
122 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
123 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
125 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
126 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
128 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
130 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
131 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
133 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
134 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
136 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
139 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
140 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
142 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
143 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
145 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
146 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
147 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
148 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
150 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
151 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
152 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
154 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
155 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
156 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
158 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
159 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
160 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
161 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
163 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
164 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
165 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
167 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
168 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
170 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
171 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
173 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
175 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
176 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
177 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
179 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
180 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
182 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
183 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
185 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
186 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
188 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
189 [present in the original version]
192 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
196 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
198 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
199 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
200 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
202 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
203 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
205 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
209 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
210 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
212 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
213 support but with insufficient /proc support.
215 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
216 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
218 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
219 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
220 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
221 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
222 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
223 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
225 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
226 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
229 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
230 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
232 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
235 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
236 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
237 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
239 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
240 directory is unreadable.
242 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
243 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
244 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
246 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
247 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
248 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
249 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
250 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
253 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
254 Before it would print nothing.
256 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
258 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
259 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
260 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
261 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
262 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
263 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
264 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
265 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
267 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
271 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
272 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
273 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
275 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
276 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
277 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
278 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
281 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
285 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
286 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
287 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
288 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
289 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
290 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
291 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
293 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
294 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
295 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
296 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
297 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
298 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
299 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
300 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
302 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
303 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
304 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
307 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
311 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
312 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
314 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
315 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
316 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
318 ** Improved robustness
320 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
321 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
322 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
325 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
329 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
330 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
331 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
332 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
333 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
335 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
339 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
342 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
346 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
347 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
348 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
349 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
351 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
352 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
354 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
355 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
356 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
359 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
361 ** Improved robustness
363 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
364 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
366 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
367 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
368 or NFS-mounted partition.
370 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
371 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
375 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
376 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
377 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
378 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
379 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
380 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
382 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
383 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
385 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
386 or neglect to report file removal.
388 For the "groups" command:
390 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
391 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
393 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
395 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
397 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
401 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
402 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
405 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
407 ** Changes in behavior
409 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
410 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
411 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
412 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
414 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
415 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
416 a final `./' or `../' component.
418 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
419 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
422 ** Infrastructure changes
424 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
425 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
426 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
427 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
431 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
434 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
435 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
436 dirent.d_type support.
438 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
439 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
441 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
442 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
443 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
444 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
447 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
449 ** Changes in behavior
451 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
455 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
456 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
460 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
461 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
462 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
464 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
465 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
467 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
468 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
470 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
472 ** Improved robustness
474 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
475 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
476 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
478 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
479 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
482 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
483 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
485 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
486 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
488 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
489 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
491 ** Changes in behavior
493 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
494 where the two are distinct.
496 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
497 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
498 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
499 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
500 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
501 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
502 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
503 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
504 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
505 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
506 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
507 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
508 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
509 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
510 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
511 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
512 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
514 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
515 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
516 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
518 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
519 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
520 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
521 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
524 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
525 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
529 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
530 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
531 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
532 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
534 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
535 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
536 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
538 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
539 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
540 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
541 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
542 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
545 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
546 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
548 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
549 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
550 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
551 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
553 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
554 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
555 successful and the output is easier to parse.
557 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
558 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
559 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
560 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
562 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
563 and sticky) with the -m option.
565 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
566 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
567 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
568 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
569 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
571 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
572 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
574 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
578 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
579 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
580 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
581 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
583 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
585 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
587 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
588 silently ignoring one of them.
590 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
591 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
592 containing this change was 5.92.
594 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
595 automatically newline terminated.
597 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
598 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
599 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
600 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
603 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
604 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
605 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
608 ** Scheduled for removal
610 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
611 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
613 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
614 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
615 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
616 command to unlink a directory.
618 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
619 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
620 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
621 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
625 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
626 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
627 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
628 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
629 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
630 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
634 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
635 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
637 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
639 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
640 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
641 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
643 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
644 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
647 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
648 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
650 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
651 list directories before files.
653 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
654 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
655 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
656 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
659 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
661 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
663 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
664 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
665 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
667 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
668 list of NUL-terminated file names.
672 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
673 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
674 usually printing nothing.
676 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
678 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
679 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
680 them with hard-linked directories.
682 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
683 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
684 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
686 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
687 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
688 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
690 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
693 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
694 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
696 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
697 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
699 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
700 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
702 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
703 all command-line arguments.
705 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
707 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
709 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
710 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
712 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
714 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
715 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
716 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
717 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
718 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
720 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
721 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
723 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
724 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
725 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
726 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
728 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
730 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
734 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
735 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
737 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
738 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
740 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
741 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
743 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
744 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
746 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
747 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
749 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
751 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
752 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
753 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
756 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
758 ** Build-related bug fixes
760 installing .mo files would fail
763 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
767 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
769 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
772 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
776 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
777 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
781 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
783 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
784 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
786 ** Deprecated options
788 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
789 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
791 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
795 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
797 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
798 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
799 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
800 conforming to older POSIX versions.
802 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
805 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
811 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
816 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
818 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
820 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
821 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
822 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
824 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
825 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
826 problematic usages. These include:
828 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
829 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
830 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
831 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
832 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
833 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
834 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
835 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
836 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
838 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
839 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
841 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
842 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
843 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
844 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
846 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
847 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
848 between binary and text files.
850 The following programs now always use text input/output:
854 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
858 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
859 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
862 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
864 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
865 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
867 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
868 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
869 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
871 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
873 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
875 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
876 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
877 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
881 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
883 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
884 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
886 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
887 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
888 blocks until F contains N blocks.
892 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
893 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
897 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
898 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
899 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
903 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
904 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
908 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
910 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
912 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
916 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
917 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
918 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
920 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
921 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
922 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
923 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
924 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
926 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
930 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
931 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
932 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
934 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
936 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
937 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
938 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
939 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
941 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
943 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
944 rather than silently wrapping around.
946 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
947 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
949 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
950 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
952 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
953 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
954 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
957 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
959 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
961 ** Improved robustness
963 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
964 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
965 no matter how large the result.
967 ** Improved portability
969 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
970 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
972 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
974 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
975 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
976 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
978 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
979 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
983 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
984 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
986 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
988 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
989 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
990 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
991 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
993 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
994 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
996 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
997 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
998 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1000 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1002 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1003 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1005 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1006 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1008 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1010 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1011 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1013 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1014 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1016 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1017 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1018 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1020 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1022 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1024 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1028 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1030 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1031 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1032 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1034 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1035 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1037 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1038 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1039 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1041 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1042 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1044 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1045 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1046 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1047 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1049 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1050 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1052 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1053 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1054 the file system does not support it.
1056 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1058 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1059 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1061 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1063 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1064 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1066 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1067 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1068 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1069 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1071 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1072 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1075 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1076 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1077 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1078 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1080 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1081 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1082 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1083 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1085 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1086 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1088 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1090 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1091 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1092 reporting incorrect results.
1096 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1097 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1099 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1102 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1104 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1105 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1107 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1108 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1110 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1113 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1114 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1115 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1116 the file name does not look like a page range.
1118 printf has several changes:
1120 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1121 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1123 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1124 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1125 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1127 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1128 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1131 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1132 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1134 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1135 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1137 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1139 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1140 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1142 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1144 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1146 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1147 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1148 when first encountering the directory.
1152 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1153 output; POSIX requires this.
1155 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1156 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1158 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1160 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1161 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1163 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1164 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1166 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1167 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1168 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1169 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1170 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1171 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1172 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1174 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1175 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1176 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1178 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1179 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1181 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1183 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1185 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1186 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1187 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1188 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1190 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1194 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1195 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1196 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1197 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1198 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1200 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1201 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1202 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1204 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1205 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1207 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1208 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1210 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1211 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1212 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1213 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1214 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1216 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1217 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1219 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1220 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1222 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1224 nocreat do not create the output file
1225 excl fail if the output file already exists
1226 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1227 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1229 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1231 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1232 direct use direct I/O for data
1233 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1234 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1235 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1236 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1237 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1239 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1241 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1242 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1245 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1246 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1247 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1248 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1249 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1250 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1252 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1253 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1255 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1258 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1260 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1262 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1263 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1265 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1266 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1267 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1269 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1270 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1271 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1273 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1275 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1276 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1278 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1279 for compatibility with bash.
1281 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1283 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1284 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1285 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1286 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1288 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1289 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1291 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1292 ls supports TABSIZE.
1293 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1294 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1295 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1297 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1300 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1302 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1303 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1304 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1305 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1306 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1307 an offset, not as a file name.
1309 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1310 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1312 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1313 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1315 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1316 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1318 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1319 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1320 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1322 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1323 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1325 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1326 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1330 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1332 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1334 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1338 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1339 or more arguments between partitions.
1341 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1342 holes in the destination.
1344 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1345 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1346 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1347 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1348 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1349 terminates immediately.
1351 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1353 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1355 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1356 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1357 not the empty string.
1359 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1360 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1364 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1365 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1366 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1369 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1376 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1380 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1381 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1383 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1384 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1386 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1387 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1388 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1391 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1395 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1396 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1398 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1399 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1401 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1402 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1403 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1405 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1407 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1410 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1412 ** Configuration option
1414 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1415 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1419 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1420 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1424 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1425 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1426 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1429 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1430 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1431 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1432 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1433 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1434 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1435 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1438 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1442 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1443 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1444 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1446 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1447 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1449 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1451 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1452 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1453 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1454 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1456 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1458 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1459 not just the ones that reference directories
1461 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1462 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1464 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1465 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1466 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1468 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1469 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1470 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1471 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1472 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1473 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1475 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1480 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1481 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1483 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1485 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1487 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1489 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1490 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1492 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1493 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1495 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1497 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1501 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1503 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1505 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1506 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1507 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1508 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1509 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1511 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1512 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1514 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1515 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1517 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1518 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1520 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1521 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1522 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1526 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1527 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1528 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1529 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1530 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1531 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1532 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1533 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1534 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1535 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1536 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1537 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1538 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1539 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1541 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1543 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1544 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1546 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1548 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1550 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1551 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1553 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1555 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1556 without a trailing newline.
1558 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1559 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1561 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1564 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1568 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1570 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1572 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1573 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1574 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1575 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1577 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1579 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1580 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1581 be printed without leading spaces.
1583 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1584 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1589 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1590 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1591 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1593 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1595 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1596 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1598 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1599 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1601 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1602 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1604 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1606 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1608 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1610 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1611 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1613 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1615 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1617 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1618 byte offsets are specified.
1621 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1624 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1627 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1628 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1629 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1630 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1631 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1632 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1633 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1634 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1635 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1636 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1637 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1638 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1639 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1640 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1641 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1642 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1643 directory where M has write access.
1644 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1645 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1646 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1649 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1650 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1651 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1652 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1653 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1654 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1655 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1656 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1657 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1658 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1659 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1660 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1661 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1662 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1663 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1664 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1665 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1666 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1667 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1668 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1669 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1670 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1671 appeared one additional time.
1673 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1674 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1675 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1676 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1679 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1680 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1681 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1682 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1683 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1684 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1685 if there were more than 338.
1687 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1688 - false --help now exits nonzero
1691 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1692 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1693 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1694 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1697 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1698 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1699 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1700 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1701 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1704 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1705 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1706 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1707 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1708 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1709 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1710 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1713 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1714 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1715 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1716 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1717 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1718 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1720 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1721 under certain unusual conditions
1722 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1723 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1726 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1727 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1728 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1729 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1730 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1731 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1732 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1733 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1734 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1735 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1736 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1737 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1738 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1739 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1740 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1741 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1744 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1745 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1748 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1749 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1750 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1751 involving hard-linked directories
1752 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1753 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1754 character-special and block files
1757 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1758 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1759 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1760 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1761 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1762 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1763 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1764 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1765 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1767 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1768 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1769 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1770 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1771 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1772 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1773 specified on the command line.
1774 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1775 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1776 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1777 the first file untouched.
1778 * readlink: new program
1779 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1780 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1781 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1782 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1783 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1784 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1787 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1788 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1789 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1790 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1791 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1792 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1793 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1794 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1795 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1796 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1797 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1798 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1800 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1801 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1802 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1804 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1805 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1806 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1807 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1808 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1809 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1810 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1811 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1814 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1815 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1818 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1819 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1820 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1821 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1822 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1823 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1824 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1827 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1828 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1830 ========================================================================
1831 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1832 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1835 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1837 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1838 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1839 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1840 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1841 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1842 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1843 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1844 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1845 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1846 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1847 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1848 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1850 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1851 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1852 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1853 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1855 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1858 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1860 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1861 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1862 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1863 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1864 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1865 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1866 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1869 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1870 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1871 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1872 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1873 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1874 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1875 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1876 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1877 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1878 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1879 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1880 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1881 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1882 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1883 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1884 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1886 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1887 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1889 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1890 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1891 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1892 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1893 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1894 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1896 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1897 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1898 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1899 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1900 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1901 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1902 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1904 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1905 the source files in the following example:
1906 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1907 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1908 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1909 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1910 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1911 links between source files with --preserve=links
1912 * cp accepts new options:
1913 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1914 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1915 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1916 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1917 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1918 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1919 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1920 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1921 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1923 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1924 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1925 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1926 even though it's older than dest.
1927 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1928 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1929 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1930 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1931 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1933 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1934 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1935 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1936 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1937 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1938 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1939 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1941 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1942 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1943 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1945 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1946 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1947 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1948 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1949 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1950 This is the default.
1952 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1953 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1954 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1955 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1956 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1958 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1961 ========================================================================
1962 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1963 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1966 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1967 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1969 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1970 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1971 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1972 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1973 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1975 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1976 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1977 that specifies a non-directory
1980 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1981 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1982 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1983 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1984 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1985 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1986 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1987 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1988 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1989 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1990 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1991 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1992 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1993 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1994 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1995 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1996 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1997 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1998 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1999 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2000 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2001 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2002 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2003 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2005 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2006 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2007 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2009 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2011 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2012 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2014 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2015 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2016 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2017 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2018 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2020 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2021 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2022 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2023 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2024 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2026 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2028 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2029 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2030 * still more portability fixes
2031 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2032 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2034 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2036 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2038 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2040 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2041 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2042 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2043 there is any time remaining
2044 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2046 ========================================================================
2047 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2048 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2050 This package began as the union of the following:
2051 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2053 ========================================================================
2055 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2058 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2059 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2060 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2061 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2062 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2063 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.