1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2004-03-17) [unstable]
7 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
8 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
12 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
13 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
14 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
15 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
16 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
18 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
20 nocreat do not create the output file
21 excl fail if the output file already exists
22 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
23 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
25 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
27 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
28 direct use direct I/O for data
29 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
30 sync likewise, but also for metadata
31 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
32 nofollow do not follow symlinks
34 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
36 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
37 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
40 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
41 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
42 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
43 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
44 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
45 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
47 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
48 list of NUL-terminated file names.
50 `date -d' and `touch -d' now accept integer counts of seconds since
51 1970 when prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents
52 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
54 `date -d', `date -f' and `touch -d' now handle fractional time
55 stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
57 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
58 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
61 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
65 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
66 or more arguments between partitions.
68 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
69 holes in the destination.
71 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
72 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
73 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
74 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
75 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
76 terminates immediately.
78 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
80 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
82 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
83 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
86 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
87 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
91 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
92 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
93 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
96 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
103 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
107 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
108 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
110 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
111 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
113 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
114 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
115 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
118 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
122 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
123 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
125 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
126 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
128 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
129 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
130 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
132 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
134 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
137 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
139 ** Configuration option
141 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
142 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
146 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
147 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
151 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
152 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
153 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
156 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
157 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
158 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
159 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
160 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
161 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
164 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
168 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
169 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
170 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
172 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
173 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
175 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
177 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
178 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
179 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
180 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
182 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
184 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
185 not just the ones that reference directories
187 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
188 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
190 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
191 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
192 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
194 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
195 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
196 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
197 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
198 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
199 ragged when a datum was too wide.
201 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
206 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
207 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
209 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
211 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
213 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
215 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
216 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
218 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
219 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
221 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
223 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
227 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
229 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
231 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
232 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
233 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
234 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
235 resolution is the best we can do right now.
237 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
238 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
240 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
241 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
243 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
244 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
246 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
247 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
248 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
252 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
253 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
254 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
255 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
256 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
257 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
258 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
259 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
260 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
261 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
262 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
263 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
264 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
265 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
267 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
269 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
270 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
272 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
274 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
276 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
277 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
279 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
281 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
282 without a trailing newline.
284 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
285 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
287 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
290 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
294 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
296 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
298 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
299 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
300 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
301 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
303 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
305 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
306 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
307 be printed without leading spaces.
309 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
310 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
315 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
316 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
317 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
319 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
321 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
322 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
324 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
325 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
327 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
328 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
330 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
332 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
334 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
336 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
337 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
339 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
341 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
343 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
344 byte offsets are specified.
347 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
350 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
353 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
354 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
355 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
356 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
357 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
358 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
359 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
360 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
361 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
362 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
363 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
364 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
365 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
366 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
367 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
368 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
369 directory where M has write access.
370 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
371 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
372 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
375 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
376 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
377 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
378 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
379 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
380 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
381 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
382 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
383 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
384 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
385 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
386 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
387 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
388 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
389 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
390 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
391 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
392 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
393 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
394 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
395 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
396 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
397 appeared one additional time.
399 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
400 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
401 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
402 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
405 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
406 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
407 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
408 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
409 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
410 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
411 if there were more than 338.
413 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
414 - false --help now exits nonzero
417 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
418 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
419 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
420 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
423 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
424 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
425 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
426 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
427 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
430 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
431 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
432 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
433 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
434 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
435 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
436 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
439 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
440 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
441 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
442 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
443 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
444 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
446 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
447 under certain unusual conditions
448 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
449 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
452 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
453 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
454 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
455 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
456 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
457 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
458 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
459 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
460 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
461 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
462 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
463 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
464 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
465 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
466 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
467 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
470 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
471 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
474 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
475 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
476 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
477 involving hard-linked directories
478 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
479 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
480 character-special and block files
483 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
484 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
485 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
486 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
487 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
488 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
489 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
490 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
491 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
493 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
494 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
495 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
496 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
497 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
498 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
499 specified on the command line.
500 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
501 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
502 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
503 the first file untouched.
504 * readlink: new program
505 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
506 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
507 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
508 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
509 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
510 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
513 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
514 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
515 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
516 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
517 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
518 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
519 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
520 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
521 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
522 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
523 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
524 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
526 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
527 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
528 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
530 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
531 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
532 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
533 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
534 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
535 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
536 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
537 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
540 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
541 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
544 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
545 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
546 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
547 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
548 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
549 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
550 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
553 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
554 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
556 ========================================================================
557 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
558 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
561 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
563 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
564 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
565 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
566 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
567 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
568 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
569 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
570 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
571 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
572 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
573 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
574 The old options will continue to work for a while.
576 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
577 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
578 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
579 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
581 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
584 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
586 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
587 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
588 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
589 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
590 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
591 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
592 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
595 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
596 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
597 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
598 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
599 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
600 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
601 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
602 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
603 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
604 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
605 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
606 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
607 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
608 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
609 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
610 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
612 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
613 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
615 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
616 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
617 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
618 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
619 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
620 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
622 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
623 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
624 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
625 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
626 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
627 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
628 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
630 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
631 the source files in the following example:
632 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
633 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
634 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
635 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
636 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
637 links between source files with --preserve=links
638 * cp accepts new options:
639 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
640 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
641 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
642 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
643 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
644 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
645 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
646 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
647 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
649 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
650 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
651 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
652 even though it's older than dest.
653 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
654 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
655 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
656 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
657 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
659 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
660 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
661 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
662 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
663 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
664 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
665 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
667 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
668 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
669 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
671 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
672 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
673 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
674 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
675 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
678 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
679 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
680 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
681 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
682 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
684 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
687 ========================================================================
688 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
689 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
692 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
693 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
695 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
696 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
697 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
698 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
699 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
701 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
702 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
703 that specifies a non-directory
706 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
707 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
708 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
709 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
710 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
711 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
712 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
713 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
714 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
715 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
716 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
717 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
718 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
719 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
720 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
721 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
722 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
723 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
724 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
725 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
726 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
727 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
728 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
729 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
731 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
732 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
733 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
735 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
737 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
738 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
740 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
741 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
742 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
743 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
744 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
746 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
747 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
748 required support; from Bruno Haible.
749 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
750 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
752 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
754 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
755 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
756 * still more portability fixes
757 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
758 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
760 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
762 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
764 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
766 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
767 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
768 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
769 there is any time remaining
770 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
772 ========================================================================
773 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
774 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
776 This package began as the union of the following:
777 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
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