1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.?? (2008-??-??) [stable]
7 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
9 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
10 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
12 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
13 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
15 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
16 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
18 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
19 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
20 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
22 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
23 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
25 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
26 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
27 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
28 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
30 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
31 in more cases when a directory is empty.
33 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
34 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
35 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
39 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
40 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
42 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
43 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
44 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
45 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
49 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
50 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
52 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
54 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
58 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
59 which have negative errno values.
63 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
67 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
71 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
72 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
75 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
79 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
80 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
81 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
83 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
84 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
85 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
86 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
90 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
91 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
92 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
93 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
96 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
100 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
102 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
103 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
104 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
107 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
111 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
112 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
114 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
116 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
118 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
120 ** Programs no longer installed by default
124 ** Changes in behavior
126 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
127 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
129 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
130 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
132 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
133 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
134 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
138 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
139 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
140 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
141 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
142 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
143 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
144 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
145 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
146 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
147 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
148 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
150 The following commands and options now support the standard size
151 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
152 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
155 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
158 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
159 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
160 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
162 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
163 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
164 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
169 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
170 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
171 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
172 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
174 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
175 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
176 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
177 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
178 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
179 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
180 of "make check" fail.
182 ** Remove deprecated options
184 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
185 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
186 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
187 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
188 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
190 ** Improved robustness
192 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
193 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
194 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
195 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
196 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
197 loss of the contents of a/f.
199 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
200 in its 35-colon command-line argument
204 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
205 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
206 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
208 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
209 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
210 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
211 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
213 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
214 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
215 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
216 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
217 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
218 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
219 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
220 destination is a symlink.
222 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
224 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
225 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
227 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
228 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
230 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
232 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
233 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
235 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
236 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
238 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
241 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
242 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
244 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
245 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
247 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
248 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
249 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
250 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
252 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
253 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
254 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
256 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
257 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
258 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
260 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
261 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
262 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
263 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
265 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
266 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
267 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
269 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
270 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
272 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
273 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
275 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
277 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
278 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
279 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
281 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
282 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
284 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
285 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
287 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
288 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
290 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
291 [present in the original version]
294 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
298 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
300 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
301 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
302 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
304 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
305 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
307 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
311 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
312 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
314 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
315 support but with insufficient /proc support.
317 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
318 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
320 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
321 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
322 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
323 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
324 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
325 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
327 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
328 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
331 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
332 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
334 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
337 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
338 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
339 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
341 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
342 directory is unreadable.
344 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
345 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
346 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
348 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
349 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
350 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
351 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
352 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
355 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
356 Before it would print nothing.
358 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
360 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
361 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
362 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
363 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
364 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
365 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
366 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
367 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
369 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
373 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
374 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
375 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
377 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
378 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
379 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
380 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
383 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
387 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
388 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
389 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
390 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
391 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
392 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
393 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
395 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
396 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
397 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
398 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
399 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
400 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
401 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
402 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
404 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
405 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
406 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
409 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
413 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
414 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
416 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
417 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
418 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
420 ** Improved robustness
422 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
423 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
424 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
427 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
431 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
432 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
433 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
434 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
435 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
437 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
441 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
444 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
448 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
449 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
450 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
451 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
453 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
454 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
456 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
457 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
458 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
461 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
463 ** Improved robustness
465 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
466 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
468 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
469 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
470 or NFS-mounted partition.
472 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
473 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
477 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
478 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
479 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
480 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
481 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
482 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
484 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
485 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
487 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
488 or neglect to report file removal.
490 For the "groups" command:
492 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
493 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
495 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
497 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
499 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
503 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
504 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
507 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
509 ** Changes in behavior
511 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
512 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
513 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
514 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
516 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
517 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
518 a final `./' or `../' component.
520 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
521 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
524 ** Infrastructure changes
526 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
527 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
528 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
529 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
533 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
536 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
537 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
538 dirent.d_type support.
540 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
541 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
543 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
544 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
545 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
546 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
549 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
551 ** Changes in behavior
553 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
557 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
558 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
562 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
563 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
564 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
566 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
567 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
569 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
570 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
572 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
574 ** Improved robustness
576 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
577 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
578 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
580 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
581 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
584 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
585 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
587 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
588 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
590 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
591 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
593 ** Changes in behavior
595 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
596 where the two are distinct.
598 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
599 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
600 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
601 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
602 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
603 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
604 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
605 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
606 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
607 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
608 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
609 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
610 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
611 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
612 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
613 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
614 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
616 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
617 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
618 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
620 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
621 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
622 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
623 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
626 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
627 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
631 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
632 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
633 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
634 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
636 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
637 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
638 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
640 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
641 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
642 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
643 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
644 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
647 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
648 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
650 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
651 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
652 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
653 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
655 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
656 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
657 successful and the output is easier to parse.
659 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
660 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
661 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
662 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
664 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
665 and sticky) with the -m option.
667 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
668 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
669 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
670 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
671 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
673 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
674 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
676 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
680 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
681 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
682 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
683 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
685 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
687 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
689 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
690 silently ignoring one of them.
692 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
693 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
694 containing this change was 5.92.
696 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
697 automatically newline terminated.
699 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
700 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
701 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
702 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
705 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
706 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
707 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
710 ** Scheduled for removal
712 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
713 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
715 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
716 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
717 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
718 command to unlink a directory.
720 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
721 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
722 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
723 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
727 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
728 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
729 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
730 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
731 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
732 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
736 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
737 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
739 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
741 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
742 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
743 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
745 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
746 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
749 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
750 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
752 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
753 list directories before files.
755 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
756 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
757 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
758 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
761 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
763 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
765 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
766 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
767 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
769 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
770 list of NUL-terminated file names.
774 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
775 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
776 usually printing nothing.
778 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
780 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
781 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
782 them with hard-linked directories.
784 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
785 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
786 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
788 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
789 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
790 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
792 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
795 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
796 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
798 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
799 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
801 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
802 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
804 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
805 all command-line arguments.
807 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
809 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
811 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
812 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
814 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
816 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
817 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
818 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
819 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
820 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
822 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
823 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
825 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
826 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
827 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
828 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
830 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
832 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
836 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
837 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
839 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
840 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
842 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
843 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
845 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
846 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
848 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
849 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
851 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
853 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
854 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
855 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
858 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
860 ** Build-related bug fixes
862 installing .mo files would fail
865 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
869 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
871 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
874 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
878 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
879 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
883 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
885 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
886 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
888 ** Deprecated options
890 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
891 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
893 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
897 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
899 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
900 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
901 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
902 conforming to older POSIX versions.
904 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
907 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
913 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
918 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
920 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
922 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
923 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
924 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
926 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
927 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
928 problematic usages. These include:
930 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
931 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
932 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
933 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
934 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
935 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
936 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
937 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
938 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
940 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
941 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
943 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
944 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
945 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
946 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
948 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
949 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
950 between binary and text files.
952 The following programs now always use text input/output:
956 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
960 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
961 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
964 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
966 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
967 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
969 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
970 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
971 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
973 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
975 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
977 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
978 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
979 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
983 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
985 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
986 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
988 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
989 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
990 blocks until F contains N blocks.
994 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
995 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
999 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1000 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1001 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1005 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1006 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1010 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1012 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1014 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1018 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1019 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1020 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1022 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1023 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1024 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1025 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1026 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1028 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1032 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1033 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1034 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1036 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1038 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1039 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1040 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1041 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1043 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1045 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1046 rather than silently wrapping around.
1048 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1049 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1051 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1052 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1054 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1055 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1056 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1057 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1059 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1061 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1063 ** Improved robustness
1065 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1066 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1067 no matter how large the result.
1069 ** Improved portability
1071 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1072 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1074 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1076 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1077 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1078 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1080 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1081 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1085 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1086 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1088 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1090 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1091 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1092 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1093 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1095 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1096 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1098 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1099 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1100 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1102 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1104 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1105 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1107 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1108 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1110 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1112 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1113 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1115 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1116 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1118 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1119 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1120 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1122 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1124 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1126 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1130 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1132 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1133 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1134 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1136 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1137 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1139 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1140 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1141 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1143 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1144 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1146 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1147 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1148 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1149 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1151 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1152 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1154 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1155 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1156 the file system does not support it.
1158 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1160 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1161 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1163 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1165 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1166 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1168 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1169 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1170 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1171 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1173 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1174 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1177 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1178 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1179 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1180 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1182 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1183 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1184 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1185 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1187 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1188 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1190 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1192 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1193 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1194 reporting incorrect results.
1198 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1199 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1201 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1204 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1206 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1207 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1209 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1210 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1212 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1215 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1216 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1217 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1218 the file name does not look like a page range.
1220 printf has several changes:
1222 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1223 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1225 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1226 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1227 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1229 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1230 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1233 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1234 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1236 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1237 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1239 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1241 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1242 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1244 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1246 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1248 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1249 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1250 when first encountering the directory.
1254 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1255 output; POSIX requires this.
1257 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1258 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1260 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1262 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1263 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1265 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1266 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1268 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1269 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1270 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1271 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1272 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1273 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1274 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1276 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1277 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1278 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1280 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1281 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1283 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1285 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1287 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1288 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1289 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1290 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1292 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1296 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1297 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1298 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1299 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1300 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1302 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1303 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1304 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1306 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1307 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1309 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1310 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1312 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1313 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1314 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1315 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1316 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1318 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1319 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1321 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1322 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1324 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1326 nocreat do not create the output file
1327 excl fail if the output file already exists
1328 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1329 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1331 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1333 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1334 direct use direct I/O for data
1335 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1336 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1337 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1338 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1339 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1341 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1343 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1344 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1347 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1348 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1349 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1350 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1351 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1352 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1354 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1355 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1357 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1360 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1362 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1364 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1365 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1367 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1368 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1369 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1371 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1372 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1373 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1375 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1377 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1378 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1380 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1381 for compatibility with bash.
1383 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1385 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1386 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1387 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1388 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1390 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1391 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1393 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1394 ls supports TABSIZE.
1395 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1396 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1397 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1399 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1402 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1404 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1405 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1406 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1407 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1408 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1409 an offset, not as a file name.
1411 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1412 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1414 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1415 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1417 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1418 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1420 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1421 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1422 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1424 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1425 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1427 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1428 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1432 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1434 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1436 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1440 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1441 or more arguments between partitions.
1443 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1444 holes in the destination.
1446 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1447 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1448 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1449 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1450 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1451 terminates immediately.
1453 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1455 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1457 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1458 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1459 not the empty string.
1461 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1462 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1466 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1467 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1468 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1471 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1478 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1482 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1483 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1485 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1486 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1488 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1489 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1490 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1493 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1497 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1498 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1500 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1501 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1503 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1504 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1505 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1507 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1509 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1512 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1514 ** Configuration option
1516 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1517 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1521 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1522 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1526 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1527 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1528 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1531 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1532 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1533 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1534 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1535 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1536 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1537 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1540 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1544 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1545 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1546 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1548 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1549 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1551 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1553 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1554 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1555 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1556 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1558 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1560 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1561 not just the ones that reference directories
1563 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1564 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1566 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1567 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1568 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1570 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1571 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1572 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1573 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1574 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1575 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1577 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1582 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1583 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1585 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1587 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1589 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1591 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1592 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1594 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1595 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1597 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1599 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1603 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1605 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1607 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1608 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1609 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1610 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1611 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1613 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1614 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1616 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1617 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1619 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1620 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1622 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1623 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1624 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1628 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1629 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1630 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1631 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1632 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1633 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1634 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1635 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1636 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1637 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1638 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1639 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1640 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1641 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1643 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1645 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1646 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1648 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1650 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1652 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1653 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1655 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1657 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1658 without a trailing newline.
1660 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1661 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1663 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1666 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1670 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1672 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1674 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1675 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1676 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1677 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1679 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1681 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1682 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1683 be printed without leading spaces.
1685 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1686 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1691 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1692 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1693 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1695 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1697 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1698 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1700 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1701 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1703 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1704 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1706 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1708 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1710 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1712 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1713 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1715 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1717 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1719 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1720 byte offsets are specified.
1723 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1726 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1729 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1730 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1731 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1732 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1733 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1734 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1735 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1736 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1737 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1738 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1739 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1740 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1741 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1742 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1743 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1744 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1745 directory where M has write access.
1746 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1747 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1748 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1751 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1752 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1753 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1754 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1755 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1756 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1757 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1758 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1759 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1760 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1761 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1762 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1763 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1764 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1765 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1766 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1767 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1768 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1769 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1770 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1771 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1772 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1773 appeared one additional time.
1775 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1776 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1777 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1778 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1781 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1782 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1783 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1784 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1785 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1786 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1787 if there were more than 338.
1789 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1790 - false --help now exits nonzero
1793 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1794 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1795 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1796 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1799 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1800 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1801 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1802 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1803 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1806 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1807 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1808 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1809 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1810 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1811 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1812 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1815 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1816 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1817 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1818 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1819 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1820 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1822 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1823 under certain unusual conditions
1824 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1825 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1828 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1829 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1830 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1831 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1832 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1833 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1834 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1835 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1836 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1837 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1838 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1839 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1840 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1841 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1842 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1843 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1846 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1847 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1850 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1851 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1852 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1853 involving hard-linked directories
1854 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1855 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1856 character-special and block files
1859 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1860 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1861 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1862 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1863 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1864 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1865 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1866 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1867 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1869 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1870 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1871 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1872 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1873 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1874 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1875 specified on the command line.
1876 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1877 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1878 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1879 the first file untouched.
1880 * readlink: new program
1881 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1882 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1883 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1884 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1885 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1886 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1889 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1890 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1891 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1892 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1893 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1894 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1895 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1896 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1897 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1898 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1899 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1900 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1902 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1903 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1904 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1906 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1907 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1908 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1909 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1910 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1911 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1912 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1913 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1916 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1917 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1920 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1921 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1922 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1923 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1924 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1925 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1926 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1929 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1930 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1932 ========================================================================
1933 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1934 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1937 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1939 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1940 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1941 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1942 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1943 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1944 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1945 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1946 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1947 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1948 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1949 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1950 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1952 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1953 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1954 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1955 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1957 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1960 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1962 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1963 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1964 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1965 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1966 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1967 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1968 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1971 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1972 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1973 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1974 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1975 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1976 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1977 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1978 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1979 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1980 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1981 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1982 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1983 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1984 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1985 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1986 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1988 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1989 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1991 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1992 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1993 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1994 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1995 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1996 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1998 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1999 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2000 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2001 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2002 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2003 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2004 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2006 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2007 the source files in the following example:
2008 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2009 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2010 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2011 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2012 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2013 links between source files with --preserve=links
2014 * cp accepts new options:
2015 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2016 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2017 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2018 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2019 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2020 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2021 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2022 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2023 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2025 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2026 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2027 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2028 even though it's older than dest.
2029 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2030 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2031 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2032 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2033 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2035 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2036 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2037 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2038 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2039 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2040 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2041 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2043 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2044 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2045 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2047 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2048 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2049 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2050 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2051 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2052 This is the default.
2054 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2055 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2056 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2057 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2058 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2060 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2063 ========================================================================
2064 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2065 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2068 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2069 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2071 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2072 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2073 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2074 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2075 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2077 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2078 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2079 that specifies a non-directory
2082 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2083 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2084 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2085 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2086 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2087 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2088 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2089 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2090 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2091 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2092 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2093 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2094 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2095 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2096 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2097 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2098 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2099 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2100 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2101 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2102 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2103 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2104 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2105 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2107 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2108 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2109 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2111 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2113 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2114 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2116 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2117 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2118 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2119 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2120 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2122 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2123 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2124 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2125 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2126 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2128 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2130 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2131 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2132 * still more portability fixes
2133 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2134 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2136 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2138 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2140 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2142 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2143 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2144 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2145 there is any time remaining
2146 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2148 ========================================================================
2149 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2150 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2152 This package began as the union of the following:
2153 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2155 ========================================================================
2157 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2160 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2161 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2162 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2163 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2164 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2165 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.