1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
8 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
10 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
11 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
13 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
14 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
16 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
17 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
18 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
19 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
21 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
22 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
24 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses.
26 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
30 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
33 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
37 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
38 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
39 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
40 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
42 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
43 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
44 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
46 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
47 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
49 ** Changes in behavior
51 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
52 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
54 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
55 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
56 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
57 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
58 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
59 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
61 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
62 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
63 the same way as the others.
66 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
70 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
71 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
72 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
74 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
75 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
77 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
78 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
79 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
81 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
82 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
84 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
85 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
87 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
88 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
89 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
91 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
92 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
93 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
94 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
98 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
99 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
101 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
104 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
105 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
107 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
109 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
110 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
111 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
113 ** Changes in behavior
115 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
116 rather than its aliased target.
118 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
119 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
120 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
122 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
123 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
124 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
125 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
126 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
127 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
128 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
129 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
131 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
133 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
135 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
136 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
139 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
140 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
141 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
142 control like taskset for example.
144 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
146 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
147 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
148 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
149 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
150 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
151 includes %C when context information is available.
153 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
154 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
155 rather than a file system attribute.
157 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
158 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
159 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
160 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
162 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
163 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
164 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
166 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
167 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
168 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
171 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
175 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
176 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
178 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
180 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
181 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
183 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
184 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
185 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
186 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
188 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
189 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
190 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
194 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
195 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
197 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
198 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
199 duration after the initial signal was sent.
201 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
202 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
203 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
204 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
205 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
206 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
207 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
208 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
209 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
211 ** Changes in behavior
213 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
214 sequence when it would be a no-op.
216 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
217 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
220 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
224 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
225 of available processors, which may not have been the case
226 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
227 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
231 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
232 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
234 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
235 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
236 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
237 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
239 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
240 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
241 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
244 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
248 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
249 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
250 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
252 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
253 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
254 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
256 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
257 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
259 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
260 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
261 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
262 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
264 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
265 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
266 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
268 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
269 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
270 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
271 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
273 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
274 renamed-aside and then recreated.
275 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
277 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
278 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
279 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
280 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
282 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
283 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
284 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
286 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
287 processes will not intersperse their output.
288 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
291 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
295 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
296 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
298 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
299 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
301 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
302 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
303 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
304 the presence of the empty string argument.
305 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
307 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
308 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
309 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
310 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
312 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
313 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
315 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
316 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
317 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
319 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
320 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
321 and with a malicious user on the same system
322 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
323 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
326 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
330 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
331 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
332 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
334 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
335 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
336 offending directory and all "contents."
338 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
339 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
340 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
342 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
343 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
344 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
346 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
347 processes will not intersperse their output.
348 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
349 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
351 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
352 output the name of the file to stdout.
353 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
355 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
356 call fails with errno == EACCES.
357 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
359 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
360 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
363 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
364 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
365 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
367 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
368 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
369 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
370 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
371 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
372 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
374 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
375 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
376 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
377 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
379 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
380 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
382 ** Changes in behavior
384 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
385 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
386 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
387 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
388 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
390 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
391 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
392 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
393 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
395 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
397 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
398 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
399 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
400 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
401 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
405 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
409 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
410 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
412 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
413 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
415 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
416 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
417 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
419 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
420 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
423 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
427 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
428 when the source file doesn't have write access.
429 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
431 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
432 to accommodate leap seconds.
433 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
435 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
436 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
437 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
439 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
441 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
442 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
443 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
445 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
446 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
447 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
448 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
449 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
453 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
454 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
455 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
456 directory or a symlink to a directory.
458 ** Changes in behavior
460 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
461 environment variable is set.
463 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
464 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
465 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
469 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
470 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
471 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
472 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
474 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
475 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
476 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
477 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
481 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
482 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
483 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
485 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
486 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
487 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
488 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
489 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
490 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
493 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
494 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
497 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
501 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
502 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
503 and libraries tested at configure time.
504 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
506 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
507 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
509 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
510 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
512 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
513 printing a summary to stderr.
514 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
516 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
517 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
518 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
520 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
521 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
523 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
524 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
525 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
526 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
528 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
529 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
530 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
531 which is relatively unusual.
532 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
534 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
535 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
536 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
537 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
538 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
539 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
540 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
544 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
545 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
546 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
547 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
548 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
552 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
553 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
555 ** Changes in behavior
557 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
558 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
559 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
560 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
561 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
564 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
568 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
569 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
571 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
572 before data copying has started.
574 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
575 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
577 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
578 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
579 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
580 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
582 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
583 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
584 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
585 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
587 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
592 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
593 for its standard streams.
595 ** Changes in behavior
597 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
598 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
599 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
600 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
601 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
602 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
604 ** Deprecated options
606 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
607 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
611 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
613 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
614 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
617 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
619 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
620 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
622 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
623 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
626 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
630 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
631 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
632 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
633 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
635 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
636 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
637 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
638 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
639 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
644 make check: two tests have been corrected
648 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
649 inherited from gnulib.
652 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
656 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
657 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
658 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
659 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
661 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
662 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
664 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
666 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
667 systems without xattr support.
669 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
670 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
671 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
673 ** Changes in behavior
675 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
676 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
677 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
678 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
680 ** Improved robustness
682 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
683 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
684 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
685 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
686 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
687 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
688 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
689 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
690 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
694 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
695 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
697 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
698 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
699 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
700 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
701 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
704 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
708 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
709 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
710 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
714 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
715 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
716 data was read, or on process exit.
717 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
719 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
720 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
721 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
722 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
724 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
725 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
726 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
727 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
729 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
730 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
732 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
733 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
735 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
736 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
737 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
739 ** Changes in behavior
741 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
742 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
743 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
745 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
746 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
748 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
749 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
750 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
753 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
757 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
759 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
760 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
761 install: Never copies xattrs
763 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
764 from overwriting any existing destination file
766 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
767 mode where this feature is available.
769 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
770 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
771 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
772 do not modify the destination at all.
774 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
776 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
780 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
781 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
783 cp uses much less memory in some situations
785 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
786 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
788 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
789 processing the first file name
791 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
792 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
793 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
794 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
796 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
797 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
799 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
800 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
803 ** Changes in behavior
805 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
806 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
808 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
809 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
810 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
812 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
813 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
815 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
817 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
818 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
819 is still marked with a '+'.
822 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
826 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
827 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
831 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
832 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
833 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
834 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
835 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
836 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
838 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
839 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
841 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
842 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
844 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
846 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
847 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
848 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
850 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
851 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
853 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
854 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
855 used to factor large numbers.
857 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
860 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
862 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
864 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
865 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
867 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
868 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
869 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
870 maximum command-line (argv) length.
872 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
873 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
874 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
876 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
877 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
881 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
883 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
884 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
886 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
887 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
889 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
891 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
892 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
896 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
897 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
898 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
900 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
902 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
903 no matter how many files are in a given directory
905 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
906 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
907 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
909 ** Changes in behavior
911 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
912 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
915 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
919 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
921 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
922 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
923 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
925 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
926 with no USERNAME argument.
928 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
929 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
930 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
932 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
933 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
934 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
935 number of fields for some inputs.
937 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
938 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
940 ** Changes in behavior
942 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
943 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
946 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
950 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
952 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
953 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
954 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
955 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
957 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
958 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
960 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
961 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
963 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
964 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
966 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
967 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
968 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
969 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
971 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
972 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
973 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
974 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
975 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
976 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
978 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
979 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
981 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
982 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
983 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
985 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
986 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
988 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
989 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
991 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
992 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
993 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
994 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
996 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
997 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
999 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1000 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1002 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1003 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1004 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1008 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1009 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1011 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1012 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1013 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1014 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1018 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1019 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1021 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1023 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1027 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1028 which have negative errno values.
1032 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1036 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1040 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1041 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1044 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1048 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1049 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1050 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1052 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1053 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1054 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1055 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1059 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1060 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1061 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1062 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1065 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1069 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1071 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1072 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1073 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1076 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1080 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1081 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1083 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1085 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1087 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1089 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1093 ** Changes in behavior
1095 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1096 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1098 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1099 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1101 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1102 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1103 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1107 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1108 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1109 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1110 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1111 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1112 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1113 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1114 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1115 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1116 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1117 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1119 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1120 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1121 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1124 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1127 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1128 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1129 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1131 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1132 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1133 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1136 ** New build options
1138 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1139 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1140 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1141 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1143 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1144 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1145 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1146 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1147 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1148 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1149 of "make check" fail.
1151 ** Remove deprecated options
1153 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1154 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1155 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1156 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1157 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1159 ** Improved robustness
1161 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1162 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1163 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1164 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1165 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1166 loss of the contents of a/f.
1168 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1169 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1173 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1174 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1175 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1177 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1178 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1179 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1180 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1182 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1183 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1184 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1185 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1186 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1187 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1188 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1189 destination is a symlink.
1191 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1193 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1194 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1196 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1197 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1199 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1201 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1202 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1204 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1205 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1207 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1210 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1211 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1213 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1214 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1216 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1217 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1218 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1219 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1221 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1222 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1223 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1225 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1226 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1227 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1229 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1230 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1231 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1232 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1234 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1235 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1236 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1238 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1239 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1241 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1242 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1244 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1246 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1247 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1248 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1250 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1251 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1253 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1254 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1256 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1257 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1259 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1260 [present in the original version]
1263 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1267 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1269 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1270 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1271 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1273 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1274 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1276 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1280 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1281 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1283 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1284 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1286 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1287 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1289 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1290 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1291 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1292 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1293 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1294 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1296 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1297 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1300 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1301 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1303 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1306 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1307 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1308 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1310 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1311 directory is unreadable.
1313 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1314 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1315 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1317 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1318 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1319 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1320 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1321 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1324 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1325 Before it would print nothing.
1327 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1329 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1330 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1331 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1332 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1333 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1334 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1335 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1336 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1338 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1342 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1343 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1344 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1346 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1347 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1348 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1349 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1352 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1356 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1357 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1358 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1359 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1360 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1361 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1362 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1364 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1365 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1366 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1367 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1368 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1369 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1370 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1371 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1373 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1374 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1375 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1378 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1382 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1383 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1385 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1386 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1387 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1389 ** Improved robustness
1391 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1392 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1393 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1396 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1400 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1401 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1402 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1403 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1404 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1406 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1410 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1413 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1417 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1418 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1419 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1420 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1422 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1423 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1425 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1426 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1427 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1430 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1432 ** Improved robustness
1434 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1435 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1437 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1438 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1439 or NFS-mounted partition.
1441 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1442 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1446 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1447 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1448 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1449 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1450 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1451 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1453 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1454 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1456 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1457 or neglect to report file removal.
1459 For the "groups" command:
1461 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1462 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1464 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1466 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1468 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1472 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1473 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1476 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1478 ** Changes in behavior
1480 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1481 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1482 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1483 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1485 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1486 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1487 a final `./' or `../' component.
1489 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1490 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1491 this only for pipes.
1493 ** Infrastructure changes
1495 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1496 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1497 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1498 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1502 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1503 name is "." or "..".
1505 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1506 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1507 dirent.d_type support.
1509 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1510 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1512 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1513 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1514 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1515 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1518 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1520 ** Changes in behavior
1522 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1526 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1527 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1531 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1532 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1533 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1535 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1536 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1538 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1539 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1541 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1543 ** Improved robustness
1545 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1546 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1547 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1549 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1550 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1553 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1554 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1556 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1557 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1559 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1560 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1562 ** Changes in behavior
1564 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1565 where the two are distinct.
1567 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1568 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1569 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1570 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1571 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1572 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1573 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1574 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1575 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1576 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1577 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1578 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1579 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1580 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1581 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1582 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1583 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1585 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1586 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1587 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1589 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1590 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1591 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1592 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1595 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1596 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1600 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1601 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1602 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1603 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1605 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1606 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1607 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1609 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1610 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1611 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1612 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1613 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1616 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1617 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1619 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1620 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1621 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1622 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1624 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1625 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1626 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1628 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1629 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1630 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1631 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1633 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1634 and sticky) with the -m option.
1636 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1637 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1638 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1639 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1640 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1642 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1643 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1645 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1649 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1650 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1651 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1652 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1654 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1656 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1658 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1659 silently ignoring one of them.
1661 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1662 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1663 containing this change was 5.92.
1665 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1666 automatically newline terminated.
1668 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1669 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1670 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1671 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1674 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1675 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1676 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1679 ** Scheduled for removal
1681 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1682 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1684 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1685 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1686 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1687 command to unlink a directory.
1689 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1690 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1691 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1692 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1696 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1697 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1698 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1699 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1700 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1701 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1705 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1706 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1708 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1710 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1711 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1712 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1714 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1715 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1718 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1719 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1721 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1722 list directories before files.
1724 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1725 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1726 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1727 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1730 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1732 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1734 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1735 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1736 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1738 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1739 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1743 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1744 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1745 usually printing nothing.
1747 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1749 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1750 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1751 them with hard-linked directories.
1753 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1754 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1755 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1757 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1758 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1759 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1761 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1764 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1765 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1767 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1768 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1770 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1771 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1773 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1774 all command-line arguments.
1776 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1778 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1780 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1781 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1783 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1785 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1786 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1787 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1788 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1789 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1791 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1792 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1794 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1795 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1796 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1797 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1799 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1801 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1805 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1806 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1808 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1809 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1811 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1812 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1814 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1815 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1817 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1818 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1820 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1822 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1823 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1824 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1827 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1829 ** Build-related bug fixes
1831 installing .mo files would fail
1834 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1838 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1840 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1843 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1847 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1848 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1852 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1854 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1855 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1857 ** Deprecated options
1859 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1860 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1862 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1866 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1868 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1869 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1870 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1871 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1873 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1876 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1882 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1887 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1889 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1891 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1892 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1893 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1895 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1896 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1897 problematic usages. These include:
1899 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1900 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1901 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1902 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1903 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1904 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1905 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1906 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1907 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1909 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1910 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1912 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1913 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1914 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1915 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1917 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1918 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1919 between binary and text files.
1921 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1925 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1929 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1930 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1932 head tac tail tee tr
1933 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1935 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1936 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1938 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1939 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1940 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1942 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1944 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1946 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1947 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1948 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1952 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1954 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1955 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1957 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1958 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1959 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1963 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1964 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1968 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1969 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1970 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1974 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1975 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1979 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1981 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1983 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1987 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1988 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1989 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1991 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1992 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1993 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1994 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1995 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1997 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2001 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2002 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2003 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2005 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2007 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2008 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2009 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2010 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2012 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2014 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2015 rather than silently wrapping around.
2017 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2018 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2020 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2021 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2023 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2024 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2025 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2026 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2028 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2030 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2032 ** Improved robustness
2034 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2035 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2036 no matter how large the result.
2038 ** Improved portability
2040 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2041 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2043 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2045 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2046 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2047 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2049 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2050 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2054 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2055 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2057 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2059 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2060 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2061 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2062 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2064 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2065 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2067 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2068 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2069 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2071 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2073 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2074 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2076 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2077 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2079 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2081 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2082 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2084 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2085 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2087 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2088 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2089 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2091 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2093 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2095 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2099 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2101 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2102 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2103 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2105 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2106 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2108 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2109 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2110 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2112 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2113 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2115 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2116 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2117 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2118 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2120 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2121 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2123 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2124 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2125 the file system does not support it.
2127 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2129 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2130 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2132 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2134 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2135 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2137 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2138 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2139 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2140 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2142 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2143 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2146 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2147 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2148 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2149 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2151 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2152 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2153 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2154 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2156 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2157 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2159 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2161 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2162 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2163 reporting incorrect results.
2167 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2168 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2170 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2173 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2175 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2176 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2178 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2179 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2181 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2184 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2185 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2186 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2187 the file name does not look like a page range.
2189 printf has several changes:
2191 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2192 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2194 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2195 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2196 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2198 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2199 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2202 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2203 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2205 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2206 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2208 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2210 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2211 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2213 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2215 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2217 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2218 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2219 when first encountering the directory.
2223 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2224 output; POSIX requires this.
2226 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2227 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2229 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2231 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2232 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2234 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2235 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2237 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2238 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2239 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2240 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2241 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2242 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2243 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2245 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2246 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2247 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2249 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2250 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2252 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2254 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2256 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2257 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2258 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2259 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2261 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2265 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2266 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2267 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2268 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2269 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2271 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2272 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2273 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2275 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2276 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2278 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2279 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2281 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2282 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2283 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2284 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2285 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2287 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2288 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2290 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2291 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2293 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2295 nocreat do not create the output file
2296 excl fail if the output file already exists
2297 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2298 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2300 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2302 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2303 direct use direct I/O for data
2304 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2305 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2306 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2307 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2308 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2310 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2312 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2313 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2316 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2317 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2318 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2319 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2320 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2321 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2323 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2324 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2326 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2329 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2331 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2333 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2334 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2336 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2337 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2338 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2340 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2341 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2342 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2344 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2346 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2347 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2349 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2350 for compatibility with bash.
2352 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2354 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2355 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2356 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2357 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2359 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2360 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2362 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2363 ls supports TABSIZE.
2364 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2365 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2366 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2368 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2371 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2373 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2374 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2375 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2376 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2377 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2378 an offset, not as a file name.
2380 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2381 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2383 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2384 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2386 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2387 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2389 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2390 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2391 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2393 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2394 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2396 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2397 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2401 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2403 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2405 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2409 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2410 or more arguments between partitions.
2412 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2413 holes in the destination.
2415 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2416 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2417 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2418 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2419 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2420 terminates immediately.
2422 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2424 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2426 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2427 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2428 not the empty string.
2430 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2431 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2435 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2436 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2437 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2440 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2447 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2451 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2452 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2454 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2455 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2457 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2458 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2459 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2462 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2466 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2467 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2469 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2470 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2472 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2473 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2474 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2476 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2478 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2481 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2483 ** Configuration option
2485 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2486 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2490 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2491 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2495 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2496 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2497 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2500 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2501 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2502 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2503 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2504 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2505 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2506 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2509 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2513 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2514 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2515 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2517 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2518 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2520 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2522 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2523 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2524 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2525 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2527 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2529 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2530 not just the ones that reference directories
2532 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2533 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2535 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2536 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2537 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2539 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2540 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2541 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2542 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2543 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2544 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2546 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2551 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2552 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2554 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2556 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2558 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2560 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2561 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2563 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2564 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2566 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2568 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2572 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2574 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2576 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2577 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2578 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2579 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2580 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2582 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2583 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2585 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2586 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2588 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2589 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2591 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2592 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2593 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2597 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2598 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2599 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2600 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2601 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2602 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2603 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2604 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2605 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2606 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2607 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2608 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2609 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2610 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2612 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2614 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2615 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2617 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2619 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2621 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2622 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2624 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2626 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2627 without a trailing newline.
2629 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2630 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2632 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2635 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2639 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2641 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2643 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2644 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2645 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2646 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2648 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2650 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2651 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2652 be printed without leading spaces.
2654 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2655 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2660 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2661 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2662 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2664 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2666 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2667 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2669 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2670 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2672 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2673 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2675 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2677 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2679 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2681 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2682 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2684 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2686 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2688 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2689 byte offsets are specified.
2692 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2695 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2698 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2699 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2700 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2701 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2702 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2703 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2704 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2705 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2706 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2707 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2708 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2709 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2710 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2711 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2712 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2713 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2714 directory where M has write access.
2715 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2716 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2717 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2720 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2721 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2722 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2723 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2724 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2725 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2726 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2727 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2728 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2729 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2730 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2731 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2732 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2733 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2734 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2735 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2736 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2737 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2738 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2739 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2740 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2741 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2742 appeared one additional time.
2744 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2745 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2746 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2747 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2750 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2751 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2752 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2753 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2754 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2755 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2756 if there were more than 338.
2758 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2759 - false --help now exits nonzero
2762 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2763 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2764 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2765 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2768 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2769 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2770 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2771 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2772 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2775 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2776 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2777 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2778 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2779 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2780 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2781 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2784 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2785 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2786 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2787 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2788 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2789 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2791 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2792 under certain unusual conditions
2793 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2794 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2797 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2798 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2799 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2800 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2801 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2802 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2803 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2804 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2805 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2806 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2807 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2808 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2809 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2810 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2811 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2812 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2815 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2816 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2819 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2820 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2821 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2822 involving hard-linked directories
2823 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2824 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2825 character-special and block files
2828 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2829 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2830 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2831 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2832 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2833 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2834 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2835 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2836 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2838 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2839 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2840 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2841 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2842 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2843 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2844 specified on the command line.
2845 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2846 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2847 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2848 the first file untouched.
2849 * readlink: new program
2850 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2851 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2852 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2853 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2854 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2855 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2858 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2859 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2860 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2861 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2862 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2863 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2864 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2865 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2866 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2867 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2868 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2869 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2871 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2872 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2873 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2875 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2876 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2877 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2878 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2879 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2880 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2881 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2882 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2885 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2886 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2889 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2890 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2891 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2892 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2893 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2894 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2895 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2898 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2899 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2901 ========================================================================
2902 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2903 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2906 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2908 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2909 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2910 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2911 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2912 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2913 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2914 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2915 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2916 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2917 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2918 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2919 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2921 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2922 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2923 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2924 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2926 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2929 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2931 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2932 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2933 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2934 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2935 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2936 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2937 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2940 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2941 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2942 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2943 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2944 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2945 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2946 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2947 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2948 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2949 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2950 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2951 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2952 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2953 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2954 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2955 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2957 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2958 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2960 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2961 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2962 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2963 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2964 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2965 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2967 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2968 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2969 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2970 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2971 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2972 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2973 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2975 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2976 the source files in the following example:
2977 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2978 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2979 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2980 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2981 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2982 links between source files with --preserve=links
2983 * cp accepts new options:
2984 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2985 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2986 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2987 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2988 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2989 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2990 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2991 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2992 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2994 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2995 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2996 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2997 even though it's older than dest.
2998 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2999 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3000 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3001 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3002 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3004 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3005 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3006 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3007 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3008 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3009 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3010 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3012 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3013 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3014 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3016 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3017 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3018 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3019 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3020 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3021 This is the default.
3023 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3024 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3025 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3026 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3027 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3029 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3032 ========================================================================
3033 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3034 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3037 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3038 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3040 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3041 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3042 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3043 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3044 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3046 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3047 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3048 that specifies a non-directory
3051 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3052 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3053 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3054 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3055 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3056 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3057 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3058 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3059 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3060 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3061 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3062 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3063 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3064 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3065 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3066 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3067 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3068 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3069 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3070 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3071 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3072 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3073 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3074 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3076 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3077 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3078 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3080 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3082 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3083 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3085 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3086 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3087 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3088 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3089 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3091 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3092 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3093 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3094 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3095 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3097 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3099 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3100 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3101 * still more portability fixes
3102 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3103 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3105 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3107 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3109 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3111 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3112 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3113 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3114 there is any time remaining
3115 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3117 ========================================================================
3118 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3119 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3121 This package began as the union of the following:
3122 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3124 ========================================================================
3126 Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3128 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3129 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3130 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3131 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3132 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3133 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.