1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.?? (2008-??-??) [stable]
7 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
9 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
10 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
12 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
13 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
15 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
16 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
18 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
19 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
21 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
22 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
23 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
25 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
26 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
28 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
29 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
30 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
31 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
33 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
34 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
36 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
37 in more cases when a directory is empty.
39 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
40 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
41 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
45 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
46 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
48 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
49 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
50 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
51 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
55 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
56 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
58 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
60 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
64 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
65 which have negative errno values.
69 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
73 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
77 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
78 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
81 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
85 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
86 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
87 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
89 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
90 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
91 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
92 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
96 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
97 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
98 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
99 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
102 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
106 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
108 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
109 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
110 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
113 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
117 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
118 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
120 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
122 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
124 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
126 ** Programs no longer installed by default
130 ** Changes in behavior
132 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
133 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
135 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
136 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
138 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
139 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
140 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
144 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
145 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
146 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
147 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
148 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
149 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
150 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
151 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
152 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
153 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
154 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
156 The following commands and options now support the standard size
157 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
158 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
161 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
164 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
165 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
166 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
168 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
169 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
170 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
175 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
176 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
177 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
178 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
180 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
181 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
182 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
183 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
184 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
185 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
186 of "make check" fail.
188 ** Remove deprecated options
190 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
191 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
192 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
193 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
194 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
196 ** Improved robustness
198 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
199 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
200 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
201 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
202 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
203 loss of the contents of a/f.
205 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
206 in its 35-colon command-line argument
210 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
211 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
212 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
214 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
215 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
216 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
217 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
219 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
220 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
221 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
222 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
223 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
224 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
225 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
226 destination is a symlink.
228 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
230 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
231 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
233 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
234 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
236 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
238 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
239 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
241 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
242 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
244 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
247 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
248 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
250 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
251 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
253 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
254 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
255 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
256 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
258 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
259 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
260 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
262 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
263 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
264 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
266 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
267 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
268 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
269 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
271 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
272 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
273 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
275 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
276 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
278 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
279 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
281 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
283 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
284 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
285 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
287 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
288 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
290 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
291 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
293 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
294 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
296 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
297 [present in the original version]
300 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
304 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
306 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
307 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
308 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
310 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
311 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
313 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
317 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
318 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
320 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
321 support but with insufficient /proc support.
323 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
324 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
326 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
327 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
328 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
329 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
330 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
331 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
333 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
334 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
337 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
338 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
340 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
343 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
344 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
345 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
347 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
348 directory is unreadable.
350 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
351 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
352 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
354 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
355 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
356 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
357 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
358 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
361 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
362 Before it would print nothing.
364 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
366 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
367 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
368 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
369 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
370 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
371 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
372 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
373 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
375 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
379 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
380 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
381 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
383 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
384 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
385 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
386 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
389 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
393 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
394 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
395 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
396 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
397 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
398 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
399 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
401 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
402 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
403 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
404 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
405 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
406 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
407 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
408 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
410 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
411 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
412 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
415 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
419 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
420 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
422 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
423 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
424 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
426 ** Improved robustness
428 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
429 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
430 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
433 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
437 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
438 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
439 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
440 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
441 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
443 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
447 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
450 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
454 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
455 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
456 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
457 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
459 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
460 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
462 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
463 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
464 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
467 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
469 ** Improved robustness
471 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
472 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
474 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
475 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
476 or NFS-mounted partition.
478 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
479 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
483 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
484 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
485 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
486 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
487 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
488 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
490 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
491 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
493 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
494 or neglect to report file removal.
496 For the "groups" command:
498 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
499 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
501 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
503 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
505 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
509 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
510 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
513 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
515 ** Changes in behavior
517 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
518 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
519 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
520 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
522 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
523 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
524 a final `./' or `../' component.
526 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
527 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
530 ** Infrastructure changes
532 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
533 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
534 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
535 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
539 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
542 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
543 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
544 dirent.d_type support.
546 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
547 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
549 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
550 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
551 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
552 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
555 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
557 ** Changes in behavior
559 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
563 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
564 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
568 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
569 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
570 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
572 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
573 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
575 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
576 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
578 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
580 ** Improved robustness
582 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
583 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
584 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
586 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
587 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
590 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
591 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
593 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
594 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
596 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
597 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
599 ** Changes in behavior
601 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
602 where the two are distinct.
604 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
605 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
606 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
607 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
608 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
609 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
610 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
611 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
612 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
613 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
614 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
615 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
616 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
617 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
618 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
619 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
620 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
622 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
623 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
624 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
626 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
627 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
628 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
629 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
632 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
633 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
637 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
638 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
639 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
640 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
642 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
643 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
644 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
646 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
647 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
648 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
649 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
650 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
653 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
654 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
656 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
657 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
658 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
659 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
661 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
662 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
663 successful and the output is easier to parse.
665 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
666 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
667 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
668 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
670 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
671 and sticky) with the -m option.
673 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
674 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
675 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
676 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
677 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
679 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
680 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
682 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
686 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
687 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
688 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
689 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
691 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
693 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
695 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
696 silently ignoring one of them.
698 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
699 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
700 containing this change was 5.92.
702 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
703 automatically newline terminated.
705 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
706 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
707 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
708 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
711 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
712 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
713 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
716 ** Scheduled for removal
718 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
719 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
721 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
722 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
723 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
724 command to unlink a directory.
726 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
727 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
728 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
729 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
733 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
734 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
735 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
736 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
737 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
738 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
742 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
743 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
745 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
747 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
748 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
749 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
751 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
752 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
755 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
756 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
758 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
759 list directories before files.
761 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
762 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
763 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
764 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
767 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
769 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
771 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
772 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
773 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
775 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
776 list of NUL-terminated file names.
780 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
781 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
782 usually printing nothing.
784 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
786 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
787 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
788 them with hard-linked directories.
790 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
791 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
792 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
794 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
795 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
796 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
798 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
801 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
802 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
804 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
805 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
807 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
808 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
810 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
811 all command-line arguments.
813 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
815 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
817 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
818 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
820 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
822 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
823 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
824 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
825 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
826 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
828 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
829 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
831 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
832 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
833 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
834 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
836 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
838 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
842 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
843 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
845 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
846 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
848 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
849 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
851 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
852 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
854 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
855 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
857 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
859 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
860 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
861 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
864 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
866 ** Build-related bug fixes
868 installing .mo files would fail
871 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
875 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
877 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
880 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
884 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
885 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
889 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
891 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
892 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
894 ** Deprecated options
896 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
897 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
899 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
903 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
905 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
906 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
907 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
908 conforming to older POSIX versions.
910 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
913 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
919 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
924 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
926 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
928 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
929 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
930 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
932 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
933 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
934 problematic usages. These include:
936 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
937 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
938 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
939 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
940 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
941 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
942 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
943 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
944 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
946 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
947 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
949 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
950 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
951 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
952 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
954 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
955 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
956 between binary and text files.
958 The following programs now always use text input/output:
962 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
966 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
967 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
970 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
972 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
973 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
975 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
976 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
977 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
979 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
981 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
983 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
984 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
985 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
989 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
991 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
992 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
994 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
995 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
996 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1000 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1001 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1005 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1006 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1007 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1011 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1012 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1016 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1018 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1020 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1024 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1025 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1026 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1028 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1029 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1030 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1031 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1032 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1034 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1038 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1039 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1040 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1042 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1044 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1045 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1046 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1047 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1049 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1051 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1052 rather than silently wrapping around.
1054 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1055 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1057 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1058 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1060 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1061 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1062 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1063 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1065 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1067 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1069 ** Improved robustness
1071 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1072 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1073 no matter how large the result.
1075 ** Improved portability
1077 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1078 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1080 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1082 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1083 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1084 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1086 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1087 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1091 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1092 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1094 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1096 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1097 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1098 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1099 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1101 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1102 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1104 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1105 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1106 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1108 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1110 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1111 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1113 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1114 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1116 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1118 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1119 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1121 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1122 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1124 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1125 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1126 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1128 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1130 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1132 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1136 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1138 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1139 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1140 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1142 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1143 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1145 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1146 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1147 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1149 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1150 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1152 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1153 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1154 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1155 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1157 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1158 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1160 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1161 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1162 the file system does not support it.
1164 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1166 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1167 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1169 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1171 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1172 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1174 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1175 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1176 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1177 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1179 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1180 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1183 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1184 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1185 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1186 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1188 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1189 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1190 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1191 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1193 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1194 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1196 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1198 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1199 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1200 reporting incorrect results.
1204 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1205 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1207 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1210 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1212 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1213 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1215 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1216 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1218 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1221 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1222 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1223 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1224 the file name does not look like a page range.
1226 printf has several changes:
1228 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1229 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1231 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1232 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1233 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1235 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1236 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1239 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1240 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1242 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1243 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1245 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1247 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1248 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1250 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1252 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1254 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1255 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1256 when first encountering the directory.
1260 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1261 output; POSIX requires this.
1263 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1264 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1266 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1268 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1269 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1271 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1272 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1274 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1275 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1276 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1277 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1278 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1279 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1280 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1282 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1283 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1284 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1286 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1287 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1289 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1291 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1293 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1294 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1295 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1296 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1298 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1302 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1303 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1304 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1305 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1306 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1308 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1309 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1310 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1312 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1313 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1315 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1316 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1318 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1319 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1320 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1321 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1322 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1324 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1325 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1327 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1328 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1330 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1332 nocreat do not create the output file
1333 excl fail if the output file already exists
1334 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1335 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1337 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1339 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1340 direct use direct I/O for data
1341 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1342 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1343 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1344 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1345 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1347 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1349 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1350 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1353 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1354 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1355 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1356 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1357 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1358 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1360 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1361 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1363 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1366 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1368 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1370 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1371 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1373 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1374 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1375 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1377 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1378 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1379 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1381 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1383 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1384 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1386 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1387 for compatibility with bash.
1389 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1391 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1392 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1393 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1394 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1396 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1397 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1399 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1400 ls supports TABSIZE.
1401 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1402 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1403 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1405 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1408 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1410 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1411 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1412 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1413 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1414 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1415 an offset, not as a file name.
1417 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1418 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1420 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1421 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1423 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1424 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1426 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1427 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1428 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1430 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1431 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1433 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1434 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1438 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1440 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1442 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1446 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1447 or more arguments between partitions.
1449 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1450 holes in the destination.
1452 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1453 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1454 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1455 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1456 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1457 terminates immediately.
1459 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1461 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1463 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1464 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1465 not the empty string.
1467 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1468 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1472 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1473 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1474 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1477 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1484 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1488 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1489 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1491 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1492 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1494 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1495 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1496 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1499 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1503 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1504 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1506 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1507 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1509 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1510 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1511 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1513 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1515 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1518 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1520 ** Configuration option
1522 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1523 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1527 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1528 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1532 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1533 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1534 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1537 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1538 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1539 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1540 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1541 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1542 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1543 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1546 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1550 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1551 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1552 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1554 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1555 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1557 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1559 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1560 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1561 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1562 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1564 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1566 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1567 not just the ones that reference directories
1569 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1570 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1572 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1573 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1574 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1576 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1577 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1578 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1579 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1580 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1581 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1583 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1588 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1589 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1591 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1593 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1595 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1597 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1598 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1600 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1601 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1603 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1605 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1609 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1611 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1613 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1614 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1615 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1616 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1617 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1619 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1620 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1622 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1623 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1625 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1626 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1628 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1629 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1630 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1634 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1635 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1636 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1637 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1638 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1639 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1640 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1641 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1642 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1643 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1644 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1645 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1646 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1647 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1649 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1651 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1652 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1654 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1656 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1658 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1659 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1661 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1663 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1664 without a trailing newline.
1666 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1667 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1669 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1672 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1676 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1678 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1680 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1681 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1682 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1683 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1685 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1687 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1688 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1689 be printed without leading spaces.
1691 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1692 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1697 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1698 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1699 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1701 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1703 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1704 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1706 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1707 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1709 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1710 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1712 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1714 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1716 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1718 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1719 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1721 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1723 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1725 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1726 byte offsets are specified.
1729 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1732 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1735 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1736 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1737 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1738 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1739 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1740 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1741 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1742 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1743 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1744 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1745 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1746 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1747 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1748 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1749 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1750 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1751 directory where M has write access.
1752 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1753 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1754 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1757 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1758 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1759 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1760 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1761 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1762 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1763 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1764 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1765 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1766 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1767 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1768 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1769 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1770 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1771 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1772 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1773 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1774 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1775 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1776 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1777 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1778 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1779 appeared one additional time.
1781 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1782 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1783 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1784 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1787 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1788 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1789 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1790 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1791 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1792 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1793 if there were more than 338.
1795 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1796 - false --help now exits nonzero
1799 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1800 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1801 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1802 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1805 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1806 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1807 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1808 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1809 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1812 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1813 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1814 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1815 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1816 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1817 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1818 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1821 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1822 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1823 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1824 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1825 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1826 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1828 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1829 under certain unusual conditions
1830 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1831 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1834 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1835 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1836 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1837 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1838 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1839 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1840 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1841 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1842 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1843 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1844 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1845 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1846 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1847 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1848 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1849 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1852 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1853 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1856 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1857 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1858 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1859 involving hard-linked directories
1860 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1861 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1862 character-special and block files
1865 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1866 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1867 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1868 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1869 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1870 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1871 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1872 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1873 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1875 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1876 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1877 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1878 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1879 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1880 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1881 specified on the command line.
1882 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1883 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1884 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1885 the first file untouched.
1886 * readlink: new program
1887 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1888 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1889 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1890 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1891 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1892 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1895 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1896 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1897 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1898 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1899 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1900 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1901 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1902 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1903 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1904 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1905 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1906 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1908 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1909 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1910 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1912 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1913 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1914 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1915 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1916 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1917 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1918 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1919 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1922 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1923 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1926 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1927 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1928 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1929 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1930 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1931 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1932 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1935 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1936 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1938 ========================================================================
1939 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1940 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1943 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1945 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1946 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1947 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1948 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1949 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1950 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1951 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1952 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1953 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1954 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1955 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1956 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1958 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1959 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1960 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1961 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1963 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1966 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1968 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1969 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1970 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1971 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1972 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1973 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1974 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1977 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1978 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1979 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1980 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1981 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1982 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1983 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1984 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1985 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1986 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1987 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1988 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1989 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1990 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1991 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1992 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1994 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1995 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1997 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1998 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1999 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2000 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2001 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2002 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2004 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2005 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2006 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2007 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2008 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2009 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2010 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2012 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2013 the source files in the following example:
2014 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2015 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2016 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2017 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2018 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2019 links between source files with --preserve=links
2020 * cp accepts new options:
2021 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2022 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2023 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2024 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2025 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2026 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2027 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2028 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2029 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2031 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2032 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2033 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2034 even though it's older than dest.
2035 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2036 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2037 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2038 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2039 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2041 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2042 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2043 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2044 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2045 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2046 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2047 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2049 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2050 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2051 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2053 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2054 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2055 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2056 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2057 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2058 This is the default.
2060 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2061 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2062 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2063 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2064 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2066 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2069 ========================================================================
2070 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2071 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2074 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2075 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2077 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2078 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2079 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2080 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2081 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2083 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2084 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2085 that specifies a non-directory
2088 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2089 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2090 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2091 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2092 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2093 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2094 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2095 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2096 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2097 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2098 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2099 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2100 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2101 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2102 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2103 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2104 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2105 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2106 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2107 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2108 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2109 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2110 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2111 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2113 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2114 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2115 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2117 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2119 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2120 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2122 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2123 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2124 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2125 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2126 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2128 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2129 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2130 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2131 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2132 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2134 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2136 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2137 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2138 * still more portability fixes
2139 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2140 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2142 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2144 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2146 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2148 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2149 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2150 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2151 there is any time remaining
2152 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2154 ========================================================================
2155 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2156 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2158 This package began as the union of the following:
2159 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2161 ========================================================================
2163 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2166 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2167 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2168 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2169 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2170 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2171 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.