1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
7 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
8 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
9 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
10 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
11 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
12 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
13 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
15 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
16 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
17 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
18 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
19 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
20 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
21 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
22 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
24 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
25 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
26 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
29 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
33 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
34 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
36 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
37 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
38 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
40 ** Improved robustness
42 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
43 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
44 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
47 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
51 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
52 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
53 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
54 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
55 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
57 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
61 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
64 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
68 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
69 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
70 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
71 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
73 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
74 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
76 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
77 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
78 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
81 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
83 ** Improved robustness
85 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
86 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
88 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
89 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
90 or NFS-mounted partition.
92 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
93 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
97 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
98 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
99 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
100 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
101 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
102 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
104 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
105 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
107 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
108 or neglect to report file removal.
110 For the "groups" command:
112 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
113 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
115 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
117 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
119 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
123 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
124 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
127 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
129 ** Changes in behavior
131 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
132 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
133 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
134 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
136 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
137 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
138 a final `./' or `../' component.
140 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
141 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
144 ** Infrastructure changes
146 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
147 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
148 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
149 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
153 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
156 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
157 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
158 dirent.d_type support.
160 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
161 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
163 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
164 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
165 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
166 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
169 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
171 ** Changes in behavior
173 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
177 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
178 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
182 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
183 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
184 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
186 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
187 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
189 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
190 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
192 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
194 ** Improved robustness
196 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
197 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
198 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
200 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
201 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
204 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
205 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
207 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
208 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
210 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
211 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
213 ** Changes in behavior
215 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
216 where the two are distinct.
218 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
219 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
220 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
221 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
222 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
223 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
224 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
225 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
226 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
227 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
228 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
229 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
230 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
231 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
232 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
233 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
234 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
236 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
237 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
238 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
240 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
241 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
242 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
243 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
246 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
247 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
251 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
252 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
253 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
254 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
256 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
257 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
258 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
260 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
261 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
262 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
263 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
264 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
267 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
268 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
270 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
271 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
272 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
273 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
275 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
276 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
277 successful and the output is easier to parse.
279 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
280 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
281 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
282 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
284 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
285 and sticky) with the -m option.
287 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
288 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
289 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
290 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
291 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
293 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
294 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
296 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
300 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
301 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
302 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
303 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
305 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
307 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
309 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
310 silently ignoring one of them.
312 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
313 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
314 containing this change was 5.92.
316 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
317 automatically newline terminated.
319 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
320 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
321 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
322 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
325 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
326 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
327 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
330 ** Scheduled for removal
332 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
333 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
335 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
336 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
337 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
338 command to unlink a directory.
340 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
341 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
342 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
343 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
347 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
348 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
349 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
350 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
351 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
352 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
356 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
357 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
359 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
361 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
362 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
363 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
365 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
366 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
369 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
370 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
372 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
373 list directories before files.
375 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
376 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
377 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
378 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
381 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
383 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
385 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
386 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
387 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
389 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
390 list of NUL-terminated file names.
394 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
395 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
396 usually printing nothing.
398 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
400 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
401 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
402 them with hard-linked directories.
404 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
405 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
406 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
408 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
409 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
410 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
412 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
415 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
416 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
418 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
419 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
421 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
422 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
424 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
425 all command-line arguments.
427 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
429 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
431 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
432 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
434 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
436 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
437 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
438 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
439 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
440 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
442 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
443 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
445 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
446 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
447 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
448 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
450 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
452 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
456 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
457 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
459 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
460 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
462 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
463 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
465 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
466 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
468 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
469 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
471 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
473 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
474 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
475 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
478 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
480 ** Build-related bug fixes
482 installing .mo files would fail
485 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
489 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
491 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
494 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
498 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
499 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
503 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
505 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
506 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
508 ** Deprecated options
510 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
511 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
513 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
517 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
519 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
520 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
521 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
522 conforming to older POSIX versions.
524 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
527 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
533 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
538 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
540 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
542 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
543 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
544 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
546 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
547 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
548 problematic usages. These include:
550 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
551 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
552 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
553 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
554 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
555 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
556 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
557 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
558 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
560 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
561 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
563 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
564 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
565 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
566 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
568 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
569 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
570 between binary and text files.
572 The following programs now always use text input/output:
576 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
580 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
581 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
584 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
586 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
587 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
589 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
590 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
591 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
593 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
595 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
597 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
598 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
599 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
603 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
605 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
606 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
608 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
609 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
610 blocks until F contains N blocks.
614 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
615 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
619 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
620 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
621 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
625 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
626 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
630 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
632 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
634 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
638 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
639 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
640 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
642 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
643 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
644 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
645 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
646 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
648 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
652 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
653 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
654 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
656 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
658 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
659 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
660 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
661 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
663 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
665 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
666 rather than silently wrapping around.
668 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
669 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
671 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
672 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
674 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
675 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
676 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
679 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
681 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
683 ** Improved robustness
685 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
686 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
687 no matter how large the result.
689 ** Improved portability
691 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
692 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
694 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
696 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
697 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
698 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
700 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
701 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
705 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
706 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
708 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
710 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
711 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
712 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
713 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
715 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
716 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
718 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
719 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
720 categories if not specified by dircolors.
722 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
724 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
725 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
727 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
728 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
730 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
732 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
733 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
735 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
736 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
738 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
739 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
740 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
742 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
744 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
746 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
750 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
752 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
753 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
754 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
756 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
757 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
759 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
760 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
761 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
763 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
764 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
766 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
767 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
768 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
769 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
771 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
772 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
774 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
775 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
776 the file system does not support it.
778 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
780 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
781 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
783 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
785 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
786 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
788 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
789 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
790 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
791 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
793 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
794 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
797 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
798 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
799 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
800 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
802 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
803 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
804 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
805 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
807 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
808 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
810 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
812 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
813 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
814 reporting incorrect results.
818 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
819 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
821 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
824 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
826 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
827 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
829 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
830 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
832 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
835 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
836 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
837 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
838 the file name does not look like a page range.
840 printf has several changes:
842 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
843 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
845 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
846 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
847 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
849 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
850 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
853 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
854 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
856 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
857 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
859 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
861 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
862 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
864 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
866 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
868 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
869 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
870 when first encountering the directory.
874 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
875 output; POSIX requires this.
877 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
878 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
880 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
882 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
883 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
885 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
886 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
888 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
889 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
890 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
891 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
892 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
893 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
894 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
896 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
897 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
898 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
900 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
901 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
903 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
905 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
907 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
908 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
909 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
910 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
912 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
916 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
917 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
918 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
919 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
920 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
922 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
923 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
924 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
926 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
927 is longer than PATH_MAX.
929 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
930 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
932 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
933 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
934 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
935 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
936 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
938 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
939 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
941 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
942 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
944 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
946 nocreat do not create the output file
947 excl fail if the output file already exists
948 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
949 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
951 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
953 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
954 direct use direct I/O for data
955 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
956 sync likewise, but also for metadata
957 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
958 nofollow do not follow symlinks
959 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
961 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
963 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
964 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
967 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
968 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
969 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
970 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
971 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
972 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
974 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
975 list of NUL-terminated file names.
977 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
980 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
982 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
984 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
985 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
987 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
988 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
989 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
991 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
992 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
993 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
995 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
997 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
998 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1000 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1001 for compatibility with bash.
1003 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1005 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1006 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1007 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1008 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1010 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1011 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1013 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1014 ls supports TABSIZE.
1015 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1016 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1017 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1019 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1022 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1024 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1025 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1026 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1027 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1028 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1029 an offset, not as a file name.
1031 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1032 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1034 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1035 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1037 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1038 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1040 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1041 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1042 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1044 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1045 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1047 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1048 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1052 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1054 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1056 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1060 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1061 or more arguments between partitions.
1063 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1064 holes in the destination.
1066 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1067 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1068 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1069 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1070 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1071 terminates immediately.
1073 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1075 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1077 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1078 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1079 not the empty string.
1081 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1082 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1086 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1087 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1088 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1091 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1098 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1102 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1103 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1105 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1106 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1108 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1109 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1110 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1113 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1117 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1118 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1120 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1121 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1123 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1124 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1125 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1127 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1129 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1132 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1134 ** Configuration option
1136 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1137 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1141 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1142 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1146 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1147 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1148 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1151 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1152 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1153 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1154 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1155 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1156 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1157 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1160 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1164 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1165 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1166 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1168 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1169 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1171 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1173 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1174 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1175 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1176 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1178 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1180 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1181 not just the ones that reference directories
1183 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1184 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1186 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1187 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1188 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1190 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1191 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1192 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1193 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1194 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1195 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1197 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1202 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1203 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1205 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1207 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1209 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1211 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1212 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1214 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1215 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1217 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1219 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1223 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1225 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1227 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1228 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1229 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1230 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1231 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1233 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1234 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1236 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1237 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1239 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1240 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1242 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1243 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1244 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1248 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1249 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1250 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1251 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1252 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1253 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1254 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1255 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1256 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1257 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1258 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1259 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1260 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1261 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1263 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1265 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1266 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1268 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1270 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1272 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1273 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1275 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1277 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1278 without a trailing newline.
1280 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1281 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1283 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1286 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1290 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1292 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1294 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1295 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1296 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1297 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1299 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1301 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1302 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1303 be printed without leading spaces.
1305 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1306 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1311 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1312 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1313 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1315 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1317 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1318 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1320 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1321 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1323 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1324 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1326 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1328 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1330 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1332 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1333 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1335 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1337 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1339 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1340 byte offsets are specified.
1343 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1346 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1349 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1350 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1351 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1352 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1353 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1354 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1355 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1356 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1357 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1358 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1359 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1360 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1361 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1362 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1363 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1364 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1365 directory where M has write access.
1366 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1367 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1368 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1371 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1372 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1373 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1374 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1375 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1376 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1377 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1378 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1379 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1380 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1381 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1382 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1383 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1384 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1385 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1386 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1387 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1388 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1389 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1390 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1391 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1392 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1393 appeared one additional time.
1395 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1396 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1397 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1398 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1401 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1402 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1403 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1404 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1405 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1406 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1407 if there were more than 338.
1409 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1410 - false --help now exits nonzero
1413 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1414 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1415 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1416 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1419 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1420 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1421 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1422 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1423 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1426 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1427 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1428 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1429 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1430 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1431 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1432 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1435 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1436 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1437 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1438 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1439 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1440 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1442 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1443 under certain unusual conditions
1444 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1445 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1448 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1449 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1450 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1451 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1452 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1453 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1454 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1455 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1456 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1457 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1458 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1459 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1460 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1461 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1462 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1463 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1466 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1467 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1470 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1471 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1472 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1473 involving hard-linked directories
1474 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1475 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1476 character-special and block files
1479 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1480 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1481 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1482 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1483 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1484 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1485 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1486 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1487 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1489 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1490 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1491 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1492 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1493 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1494 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1495 specified on the command line.
1496 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1497 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1498 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1499 the first file untouched.
1500 * readlink: new program
1501 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1502 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1503 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1504 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1505 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1506 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1509 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1510 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1511 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1512 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1513 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1514 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1515 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1516 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1517 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1518 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1519 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1520 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1522 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1523 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1524 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1526 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1527 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1528 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1529 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1530 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1531 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1532 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1533 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1536 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1537 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1540 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1541 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1542 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1543 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1544 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1545 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1546 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1549 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1550 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1552 ========================================================================
1553 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1554 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1557 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1559 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1560 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1561 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1562 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1563 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1564 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1565 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1566 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1567 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1568 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1569 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1570 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1572 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1573 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1574 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1575 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1577 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1580 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1582 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1583 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1584 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1585 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1586 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1587 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1588 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1591 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1592 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1593 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1594 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1595 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1596 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1597 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1598 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1599 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1600 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1601 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1602 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1603 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1604 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1605 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1606 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1608 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1609 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1611 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1612 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1613 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1614 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1615 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1616 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1618 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1619 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1620 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1621 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1622 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1623 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1624 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1626 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1627 the source files in the following example:
1628 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1629 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1630 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1631 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1632 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1633 links between source files with --preserve=links
1634 * cp accepts new options:
1635 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1636 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1637 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1638 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1639 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1640 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1641 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1642 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1643 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1645 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1646 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1647 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1648 even though it's older than dest.
1649 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1650 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1651 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1652 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1653 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1655 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1656 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1657 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1658 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1659 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1660 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1661 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1663 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1664 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1665 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1667 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1668 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1669 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1670 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1671 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1672 This is the default.
1674 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1675 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1676 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1677 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1678 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1680 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1683 ========================================================================
1684 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1685 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1688 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1689 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1691 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1692 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1693 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1694 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1695 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1697 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1698 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1699 that specifies a non-directory
1702 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1703 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1704 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1705 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1706 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1707 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1708 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1709 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1710 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1711 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1712 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1713 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1714 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1715 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1716 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1717 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1718 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1719 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1720 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1721 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1722 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1723 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1724 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1725 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1727 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1728 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1729 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1731 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1733 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1734 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1736 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1737 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1738 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1739 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1740 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1742 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1743 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1744 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1745 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1746 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1748 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1750 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1751 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1752 * still more portability fixes
1753 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1754 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1756 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1758 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1760 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1762 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1763 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1764 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1765 there is any time remaining
1766 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1768 ========================================================================
1769 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1770 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1772 This package began as the union of the following:
1773 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1775 ========================================================================
1777 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1780 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1781 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1782 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1783 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1784 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1785 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.