1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 6.0-cvs (2006-??-??) [unstable]
7 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
8 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
10 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
11 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
13 ** Changes in behavior
15 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
16 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
17 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by chrooted
18 bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
20 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
21 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
22 successful and the output is easier to parse.
24 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
25 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
26 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
27 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
29 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
30 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
32 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
33 and sticky) with the -m option.
35 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
36 silently ignoring one of them.
38 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
39 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
40 containing this change was 5.92.
42 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
43 automatically newline terminated.
44 works, backslash escapes in FMT *are* interpreted.
46 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
47 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
48 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
49 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
52 ** Scheduled for removal
54 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
55 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
56 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
57 command to unlink a directory.
59 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
60 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
61 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
62 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
66 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
67 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
68 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
69 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
70 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
74 dd's new iflag=noatime option causes it to read a file without
75 updating its access time, on hosts that support this (currently only
76 Linux kernels, version 2.6.8 and later).
78 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
79 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
80 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
81 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
84 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option,
85 as well as the --seed=STRING option.
89 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
90 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
91 them with hard-linked directories.
93 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
94 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
95 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
97 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
98 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
99 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
101 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
102 all command-line arguments.
104 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
106 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
108 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
109 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
110 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
111 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
112 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
114 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
115 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
117 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
121 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
122 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
124 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
125 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
127 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
128 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
130 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
131 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
133 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
134 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
136 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
138 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
139 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
140 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
143 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
145 ** Build-related bug fixes
147 installing .mo files would fail
150 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
154 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
156 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
159 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
163 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
164 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
168 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
170 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
171 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
173 ** Deprecated options
175 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
176 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
178 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
182 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
184 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
185 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
186 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
187 conforming to older POSIX versions.
189 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
192 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
198 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
203 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
205 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
207 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
208 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
209 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
211 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
212 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
213 problematic usages. These include:
215 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
216 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
217 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
218 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
219 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
220 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
221 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
222 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
223 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
225 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
226 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
228 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
229 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
230 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
231 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
233 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
234 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
235 between binary and text files.
237 The following programs now always use text input/output:
241 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
245 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
246 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
249 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
251 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
252 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
254 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
255 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
256 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
258 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
260 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
262 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
263 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
264 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
268 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
270 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
271 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
273 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
274 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
275 blocks until F contains N blocks.
279 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
280 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
284 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
285 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
286 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
290 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
291 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
295 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
297 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
299 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
303 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
304 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
305 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
307 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
308 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
309 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
310 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
311 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
313 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
317 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
318 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
319 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
321 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
323 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
324 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
325 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
326 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
328 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
330 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
331 rather than silently wrapping around.
333 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
334 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
336 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
337 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
339 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
340 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
341 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
344 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
346 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
348 ** Improved robustness
350 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
351 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
352 no matter how large the result.
354 ** Improved portability
356 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
357 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
359 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
361 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
362 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
363 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
365 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
366 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
370 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
371 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
373 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
375 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
376 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
377 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
378 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
380 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
381 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
383 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
384 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
385 categories if not specified by dircolors.
387 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
389 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
390 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
392 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
393 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
395 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
397 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
398 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
400 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
401 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
403 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
404 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
405 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
407 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
409 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
411 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
415 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
417 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
418 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
419 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
421 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
422 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
424 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
425 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
426 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
428 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
429 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
431 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
432 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
433 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
434 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
436 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
437 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
439 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
440 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
441 the file system does not support it.
443 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
445 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
446 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
448 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
450 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
451 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
453 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
454 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
455 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
456 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
458 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
459 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
462 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
463 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
464 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
465 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
467 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
468 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
469 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
470 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
472 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
473 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
475 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
477 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
478 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
479 reporting incorrect results.
483 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
484 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
486 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
489 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
491 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
492 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
494 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
495 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
497 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
500 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
501 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
502 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
503 the file name does not look like a page range.
505 printf has several changes:
507 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
508 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
510 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
511 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
512 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
514 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
515 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
518 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
519 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
521 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
522 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
524 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
526 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
527 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
529 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
531 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
533 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
534 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
535 when first encountering the directory.
539 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
540 output; POSIX requires this.
542 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
543 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
545 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
547 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
548 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
550 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
551 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
553 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
554 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
555 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
556 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
557 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
558 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
559 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
561 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
562 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
563 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
565 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
566 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
568 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
570 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
572 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
573 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
574 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
575 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
577 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
581 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
582 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
583 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
584 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
585 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
587 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
588 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
589 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
591 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
592 is longer than PATH_MAX.
594 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
595 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
597 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
598 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
599 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
600 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
601 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
603 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
604 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
606 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
607 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
609 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
611 nocreat do not create the output file
612 excl fail if the output file already exists
613 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
614 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
616 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
618 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
619 direct use direct I/O for data
620 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
621 sync likewise, but also for metadata
622 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
623 nofollow do not follow symlinks
624 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
626 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
628 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
629 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
632 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
633 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
634 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
635 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
636 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
637 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
639 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
640 list of NUL-terminated file names.
642 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
645 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
647 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
649 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
650 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
652 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
653 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
654 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
656 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
657 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
658 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
660 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
662 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
663 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
665 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
666 for compatibility with bash.
668 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
670 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
671 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
672 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
673 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
675 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
676 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
678 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
680 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
681 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
682 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
684 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
687 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
689 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
690 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
691 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
692 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
693 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
694 an offset, not as a file name.
696 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
697 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
699 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
700 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
702 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
703 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
705 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
706 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
707 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
709 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
710 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
712 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
713 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
717 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
719 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
721 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
725 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
726 or more arguments between partitions.
728 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
729 holes in the destination.
731 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
732 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
733 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
734 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
735 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
736 terminates immediately.
738 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
740 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
742 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
743 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
744 not the empty string.
746 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
747 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
751 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
752 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
753 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
756 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
763 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
767 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
768 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
770 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
771 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
773 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
774 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
775 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
778 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
782 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
783 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
785 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
786 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
788 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
789 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
790 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
792 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
794 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
797 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
799 ** Configuration option
801 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
802 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
806 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
807 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
811 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
812 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
813 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
816 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
817 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
818 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
819 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
820 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
821 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
822 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
825 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
829 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
830 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
831 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
833 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
834 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
836 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
838 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
839 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
840 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
841 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
843 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
845 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
846 not just the ones that reference directories
848 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
849 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
851 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
852 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
853 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
855 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
856 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
857 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
858 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
859 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
860 ragged when a datum was too wide.
862 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
867 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
868 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
870 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
872 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
874 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
876 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
877 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
879 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
880 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
882 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
884 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
888 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
890 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
892 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
893 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
894 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
895 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
896 resolution is the best we can do right now.
898 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
899 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
901 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
902 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
904 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
905 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
907 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
908 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
909 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
913 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
914 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
915 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
916 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
917 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
918 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
919 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
920 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
921 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
922 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
923 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
924 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
925 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
926 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
928 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
930 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
931 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
933 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
935 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
937 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
938 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
940 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
942 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
943 without a trailing newline.
945 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
946 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
948 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
951 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
955 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
957 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
959 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
960 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
961 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
962 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
964 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
966 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
967 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
968 be printed without leading spaces.
970 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
971 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
976 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
977 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
978 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
980 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
982 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
983 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
985 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
986 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
988 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
989 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
991 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
993 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
995 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
997 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
998 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1000 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1002 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1004 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1005 byte offsets are specified.
1008 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1011 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1014 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1015 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1016 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1017 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1018 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1019 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1020 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1021 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1022 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1023 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1024 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1025 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1026 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1027 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1028 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1029 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1030 directory where M has write access.
1031 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1032 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1033 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1036 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1037 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1038 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1039 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1040 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1041 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1042 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1043 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1044 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1045 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1046 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1047 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1048 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1049 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1050 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1051 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1052 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1053 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1054 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1055 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1056 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1057 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1058 appeared one additional time.
1060 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1061 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1062 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1063 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1066 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1067 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1068 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1069 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1070 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1071 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1072 if there were more than 338.
1074 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1075 - false --help now exits nonzero
1078 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1079 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1080 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1081 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1084 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1085 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1086 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1087 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1088 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1091 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1092 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1093 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1094 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1095 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1096 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1097 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1100 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1101 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1102 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1103 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1104 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1105 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1107 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1108 under certain unusual conditions
1109 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1110 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1113 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1114 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1115 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1116 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1117 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1118 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1119 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1120 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1121 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1122 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1123 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1124 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1125 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1126 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1127 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1128 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1131 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1132 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1135 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1136 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1137 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1138 involving hard-linked directories
1139 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1140 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1141 character-special and block files
1144 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1145 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1146 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1147 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1148 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1149 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1150 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1151 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1152 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1154 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1155 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1156 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1157 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1158 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1159 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1160 specified on the command line.
1161 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1162 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1163 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1164 the first file untouched.
1165 * readlink: new program
1166 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1167 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1168 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1169 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1170 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1171 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1174 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1175 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1176 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1177 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1178 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1179 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1180 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1181 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1182 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1183 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1184 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1185 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1187 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1188 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1189 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1191 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1192 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1193 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1194 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1195 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1196 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1197 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1198 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1201 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1202 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1205 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1206 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1207 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1208 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1209 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1210 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1211 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1214 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1215 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1217 ========================================================================
1218 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1219 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1222 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1224 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1225 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1226 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1227 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1228 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1229 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1230 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1231 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1232 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1233 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1234 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1235 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1237 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1238 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1239 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1240 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1242 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1245 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1247 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1248 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1249 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1250 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1251 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1252 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1253 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1256 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1257 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1258 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1259 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1260 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1261 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1262 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1263 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1264 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1265 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1266 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1267 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1268 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1269 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1270 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1271 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1273 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1274 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1276 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1277 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1278 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1279 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1280 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1281 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1283 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1284 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1285 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1286 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1287 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1288 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1289 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1291 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1292 the source files in the following example:
1293 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1294 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1295 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1296 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1297 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1298 links between source files with --preserve=links
1299 * cp accepts new options:
1300 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1301 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1302 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1303 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1304 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1305 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1306 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1307 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1308 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1310 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1311 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1312 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1313 even though it's older than dest.
1314 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1315 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1316 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1317 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1318 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1320 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1321 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1322 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1323 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1324 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1325 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1326 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1328 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1329 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1330 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1332 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1333 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1334 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1335 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1336 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1337 This is the default.
1339 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1340 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1341 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1342 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1343 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1345 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1348 ========================================================================
1349 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1350 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1353 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1354 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1356 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1357 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1358 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1359 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1360 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1362 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1363 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1364 that specifies a non-directory
1367 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1368 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1369 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1370 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1371 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1372 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1373 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1374 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1375 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1376 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1377 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1378 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1379 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1380 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1381 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1382 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1383 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1384 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1385 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1386 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1387 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1388 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1389 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1390 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1392 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1393 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1394 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1396 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1398 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1399 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1401 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1402 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1403 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1404 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1405 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1407 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1408 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1409 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1410 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1411 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1413 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1415 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1416 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1417 * still more portability fixes
1418 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1419 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1421 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1423 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1425 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1427 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1428 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1429 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1430 there is any time remaining
1431 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1433 ========================================================================
1434 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1435 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1437 This package began as the union of the following:
1438 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.