1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 dd now accepts the count_bytes, skip_bytes iflags and the seek_bytes
8 oflag, to more easily allow processing portions of a file.
10 dd now accepts the conv=sparse flag to attempt to create sparse
11 output, by seeking rather than writing to the output file.
13 split now accepts an optional "from" argument to --numeric-suffixes,
14 which changes the start number from the default of 0.
16 split now accepts the --additional-suffix option, to append an
17 additional static suffix to output file names.
19 basename now supports the -a and -s options, which allow processing
20 of more than one argument at a time. Also the complementary
21 -z option was added to delimit output items with the NUL character.
25 du --one-file-system (-x) would ignore any non-directory specified on
26 the command line. For example, "touch f; du -x f" would print nothing.
27 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.14]
29 mv now lets you move a symlink onto a same-inode destination file that
30 has two or more hard links. Before, it would reject that, saying that
31 they are the same, implicitly warning you that the move would result in
32 data loss. In this unusual case, when not moving the symlink onto its
33 referent, there is no risk of data loss, since the symlink will
34 typically still point to one of the hard links.
36 "mv A B" could succeed, yet A would remain. This would happen only when
37 both A and B were hard links to the same symlink, and with a kernel for
38 which rename("A","B") does nothing and returns 0 (POSIX mandates this
39 surprising rename no-op behavior). Now, mv handles this case by skipping
40 the usually-useless rename and simply unlinking A.
44 ls can be much more efficient, especially with large directories on file
45 systems for which getfilecon-, ACL-check- and XATTR-check-induced syscalls
46 fail with ENOTSUP or similar.
49 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.15 (2012-01-06) [stable]
53 realpath: print resolved file names.
57 du -x no longer counts root directories of other file systems.
58 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
60 ls --color many-entry-directory was uninterruptible for too long
61 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.2.1]
63 ls's -k option no longer affects how ls -l outputs file sizes.
64 It now affects only the per-directory block counts written by -l,
65 and the sizes written by -s. This is for compatibility with BSD
66 and with POSIX 2008. Because -k is no longer equivalent to
67 --block-size=1KiB, a new long option --kibibyte stands for -k.
68 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.4]
70 ls -l would leak a little memory (security context string) for each
71 nonempty directory listed on the command line, when using SELinux.
72 [bug probably introduced in coreutils-6.10 with SELinux support]
74 rm -rf DIR would fail with "Device or resource busy" on Cygwin with NWFS
75 and NcFsd file systems. This did not affect Unix/Linux-based kernels.
76 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0, when rm began using fts]
78 split -n 1/2 FILE no longer fails when operating on a growing file, or
79 (on some systems) when operating on a non-regular file like /dev/zero.
80 It would report "/dev/zero: No such file or directory" even though
81 the file obviously exists. Same for -n l/2.
82 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8, with the addition of the -n option]
84 stat -f now recognizes the FhGFS and PipeFS file system types.
86 tac no longer fails to handle two or more non-seekable inputs
87 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
89 tail -f no longer tries to use inotify on GPFS or FhGFS file systems
90 [you might say this was introduced in coreutils-7.5, along with inotify
91 support, but the new magic numbers weren't in the usual places then.]
93 ** Changes in behavior
95 df avoids long UUID-including file system names in the default listing.
96 With recent enough kernel/tools, these long names would be used, pushing
97 second and subsequent columns far to the right. Now, when a long name
98 refers to a symlink, and no file systems are specified, df prints the
99 usually-short referent instead.
101 tail -f now uses polling (not inotify) when any of its file arguments
102 resides on a file system of unknown type. In addition, for each such
103 argument, tail -f prints a warning with the FS type magic number and a
104 request to report it to the bug-reporting address.
107 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.14 (2011-10-12) [stable]
111 ls --dereference no longer outputs erroneous "argetm" strings for
112 dangling symlinks when an 'ln=target' entry is in $LS_COLORS.
113 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
115 ls -lL symlink once again properly prints "+" when the referent has an ACL.
116 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.13]
118 sort -g no longer infloops for certain inputs containing NaNs
119 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
123 md5sum --check now supports the -r format from the corresponding BSD tool.
124 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
126 pwd now works also on systems without openat. On such systems, pwd
127 would fail when run from a directory whose absolute name contained
128 more than PATH_MAX / 3 components. The df, stat and readlink programs
129 are also affected due to their use of the canonicalize_* functions.
131 ** Changes in behavior
133 timeout now only processes the first signal received from the set
134 it is handling (SIGTERM, SIGINT, ...). This is to support systems that
135 implicitly create threads for some timer functions (like GNU/kFreeBSD).
139 "make dist" no longer builds .tar.gz files.
140 xz is portable enough and in wide-enough use that distributing
141 only .tar.xz files is enough.
144 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.13 (2011-09-08) [stable]
148 chown and chgrp with the -v --from= options, now output the correct owner.
149 I.E. for skipped files, the original ownership is output, not the new one.
150 [bug introduced in sh-utils-2.0g]
152 cp -r could mistakenly change the permissions of an existing destination
153 directory. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.8]
155 cp -u -p would fail to preserve one hard link for each up-to-date copy
156 of a src-hard-linked name in the destination tree. I.e., if s/a and s/b
157 are hard-linked and dst/s/a is up to date, "cp -up s dst" would copy s/b
158 to dst/s/b rather than simply linking dst/s/b to dst/s/a.
159 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
161 fts-using tools (rm, du, chmod, chgrp, chown, chcon) no longer use memory
162 proportional to the number of entries in each directory they process.
163 Before, rm -rf 4-million-entry-directory would consume about 1GiB of memory.
164 Now, it uses less than 30MB, no matter how many entries there are.
165 [this bug was inherent in the use of fts: thus, for rm the bug was
166 introduced in coreutils-8.0. The prior implementation of rm did not use
167 as much memory. du, chmod, chgrp and chown started using fts in 6.0.
168 chcon was added in coreutils-6.9.91 with fts support. ]
170 pr -T no longer ignores a specified LAST_PAGE to stop at.
171 [bug introduced in textutils-1.19q]
173 printf '%d' '"' no longer accesses out-of-bounds memory in the diagnostic.
174 [bug introduced in sh-utils-1.16]
176 split --number l/... no longer creates extraneous files in certain cases.
177 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
179 timeout now sends signals to commands that create their own process group.
180 timeout is no longer confused when starting off with a child process.
181 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.0]
183 unexpand -a now aligns correctly when there are spaces spanning a tabstop,
184 followed by a tab. In that case a space was dropped, causing misalignment.
185 We also now ensure that a space never precedes a tab.
186 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
188 ** Changes in behavior
190 chmod, chown and chgrp now output the original attributes in messages,
191 when -v or -c specified.
193 cp -au (where --preserve=links is implicit) may now replace newer
194 files in the destination, to mirror hard links from the source.
198 date now accepts ISO 8601 date-time strings with "T" as the
199 separator. It has long parsed dates like "2004-02-29 16:21:42"
200 with a space between the date and time strings. Now it also parses
201 "2004-02-29T16:21:42" and fractional-second and time-zone-annotated
202 variants like "2004-02-29T16:21:42.333-07:00"
204 md5sum accepts the new --strict option. With --check, it makes the
205 tool exit non-zero for any invalid input line, rather than just warning.
206 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
208 split accepts a new --filter=CMD option. With it, split filters output
209 through CMD. CMD may use the $FILE environment variable, which is set to
210 the nominal output file name for each invocation of CMD. For example, to
211 split a file into 3 approximately equal parts, which are then compressed:
212 split -n3 --filter='xz > $FILE.xz' big
213 Note the use of single quotes, not double quotes.
214 That creates files named xaa.xz, xab.xz and xac.xz.
216 timeout accepts a new --foreground option, to support commands not started
217 directly from a shell prompt, where the command is interactive or needs to
218 receive signals initiated from the terminal.
222 cp -p now copies trivial NSFv4 ACLs on Solaris 10. Before, it would
223 mistakenly apply a non-trivial ACL to the destination file.
225 cp and ls now support HP-UX 11.11's ACLs, thanks to improved support
228 df now supports disk partitions larger than 4 TiB on MacOS X 10.5
229 or newer and on AIX 5.2 or newer.
231 join --check-order now prints "join: FILE:LINE_NUMBER: bad_line" for an
232 unsorted input, rather than e.g., "join: file 1 is not in sorted order".
234 shuf outputs small subsets of large permutations much more efficiently.
235 For example 'shuf -i1-$((2**32-1)) -n2' no longer exhausts memory.
237 stat -f now recognizes the GPFS, MQUEUE and PSTOREFS file system types.
239 timeout now supports sub-second timeouts.
243 Changes inherited from gnulib address a build failure on HP-UX 11.11
244 when using /opt/ansic/bin/cc.
246 Numerous portability and build improvements inherited via gnulib.
249 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.12 (2011-04-26) [stable]
253 tail's --follow=name option no longer implies --retry on systems
254 with inotify support. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
256 ** Changes in behavior
258 cp's extent-based (FIEMAP) copying code is more reliable in the face
259 of varying and undocumented file system semantics:
260 - it no longer treats unwritten extents specially
261 - a FIEMAP-based extent copy always uses the FIEMAP_FLAG_SYNC flag.
262 Before, it would incur the performance penalty of that sync only
263 for 2.6.38 and older kernels. We thought all problems would be
265 - it now attempts a FIEMAP copy only on a file that appears sparse.
266 Sparse files are relatively unusual, and the copying code incurs
267 the performance penalty of the now-mandatory sync only for them.
271 dd once again compiles on AIX 5.1 and 5.2
274 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.11 (2011-04-13) [stable]
278 cp -a --link would not create a hardlink to a symlink, instead
279 copying the symlink and then not preserving its timestamp.
280 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
282 cp now avoids FIEMAP issues with BTRFS before Linux 2.6.38,
283 which could result in corrupt copies of sparse files.
284 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
286 cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
287 delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
288 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
290 du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR
291 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
293 sort no longer spawns 7 worker threads to sort 16 lines
294 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
296 touch built on Solaris 9 would segfault when run on Solaris 10
297 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
299 wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
300 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
304 dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options,
305 which will discard any cache associated with the files, or
306 processed portion thereof.
308 dd now warns that 'iflag=fullblock' should be used,
309 in various cases where partial reads can cause issues.
311 ** Changes in behavior
313 cp now avoids syncing files when possible, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
314 The sync is only needed on Linux kernels before 2.6.39.
315 [The sync was introduced in coreutils-8.10]
317 cp now copies empty extents efficiently, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
318 It no longer reads the zero bytes from the input, and also can efficiently
319 create a hole in the output file when --sparse=always is specified.
321 df now aligns columns consistently, and no longer wraps entries
322 with longer device identifiers, over two lines.
324 install now rejects its long-deprecated --preserve_context option.
325 Use --preserve-context instead.
327 test now accepts "==" as a synonym for "="
330 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
334 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
335 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
336 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
337 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
338 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
340 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
341 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
343 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
344 reject file names invalid for that file system.
346 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
347 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
351 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
352 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
353 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
354 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
355 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
356 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
357 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
358 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
360 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
361 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
362 the same number of fields are output for each line.
364 ** Changes in behavior
366 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
367 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
368 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
371 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
375 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
376 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
377 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
380 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
384 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
385 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
387 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
388 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
390 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
391 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
393 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
394 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
395 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
396 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
398 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
399 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
401 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
402 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
403 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
405 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
407 ** Changes in behavior
409 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
410 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
411 to the number of available processors.
415 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
418 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
422 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
423 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
424 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
425 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
427 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
428 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
429 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
431 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
432 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
434 ** Changes in behavior
436 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
437 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
439 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
440 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
441 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
442 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
443 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
444 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
446 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
447 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
448 the same way as the others.
451 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
455 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
456 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
457 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
459 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
460 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
462 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
463 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
464 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
466 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
467 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
469 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
470 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
472 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
473 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
474 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
476 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
477 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
478 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
479 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
483 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
484 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
486 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
489 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
490 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
492 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
494 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
495 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
496 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
498 ** Changes in behavior
500 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
501 rather than its aliased target.
503 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
504 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
505 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
507 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
508 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
509 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
510 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
511 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
512 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
513 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
514 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
516 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
518 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
520 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
521 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
524 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
525 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
526 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
527 control like taskset for example.
529 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
531 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
532 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
533 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
534 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
535 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
536 includes %C when context information is available.
538 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
539 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
540 rather than a file system attribute.
542 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
543 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
544 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
545 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
547 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
548 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
549 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
551 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
552 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
553 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
556 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
560 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
561 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
563 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
565 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
566 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
568 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
569 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
570 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
571 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
573 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
574 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
575 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
579 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
580 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
582 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
583 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
584 duration after the initial signal was sent.
586 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
587 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
588 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
589 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
590 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
591 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
592 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
593 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
594 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
596 ** Changes in behavior
598 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
599 sequence when it would be a no-op.
601 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
602 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
605 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
609 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
610 of available processors, which may not have been the case
611 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
612 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
616 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
617 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
619 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
620 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
621 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
622 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
624 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
625 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
626 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
629 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
633 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
634 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
635 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
637 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
638 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
639 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
641 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
642 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
644 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
645 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
646 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
647 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
649 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
650 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
651 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
653 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
654 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
655 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
656 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
658 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
659 renamed-aside and then recreated.
660 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
662 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
663 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
664 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
665 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
667 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
668 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
669 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
671 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
672 processes will not intersperse their output.
673 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
676 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
680 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
681 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
683 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
684 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
686 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
687 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
688 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
689 the presence of the empty string argument.
690 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
692 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
693 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
694 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
695 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
697 tail without -f no longer accesses uninitialized memory
698 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
700 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
701 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
702 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
704 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
705 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
706 and with a malicious user on the same system
707 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
708 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
711 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
715 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
716 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
717 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
719 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
720 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
721 offending directory and all "contents."
723 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
724 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
725 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
727 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
728 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
729 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
731 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
732 processes will not intersperse their output.
733 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
734 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
736 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
737 output the name of the file to stdout.
738 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
740 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
741 call fails with errno == EACCES.
742 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
744 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
745 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
748 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
749 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
750 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
752 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
753 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
754 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
755 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
756 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
757 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
759 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
760 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
761 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
762 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
764 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
765 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
767 ** Changes in behavior
769 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
770 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
771 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
772 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
773 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
775 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
776 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
777 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
778 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
780 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
782 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
783 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
784 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
785 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
786 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
790 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
794 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
795 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
797 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
798 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
800 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
801 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
802 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
804 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
805 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
808 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
812 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
813 when the source file doesn't have write access.
814 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
816 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
817 to accommodate leap seconds.
818 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
820 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
821 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
822 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
824 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
826 "ls -is" is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
827 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
828 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
830 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
831 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
832 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
833 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
834 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
838 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
839 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
840 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
841 directory or a symlink to a directory.
843 ** Changes in behavior
845 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
846 environment variable is set.
848 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
849 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
850 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
854 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
855 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
856 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
857 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
859 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
860 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
861 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
862 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
866 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
867 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
868 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
870 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
871 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
872 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
873 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
874 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
875 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
878 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
879 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
882 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
886 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
887 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
888 and libraries tested at configure time.
889 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
891 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
892 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
894 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
895 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
897 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
898 printing a summary to stderr.
899 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
901 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
902 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
903 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
905 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
906 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
908 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
909 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
910 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
911 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
913 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
914 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
915 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
916 which is relatively unusual.
917 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
919 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
920 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
921 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
922 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
923 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
924 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
925 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
929 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
930 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
931 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
932 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
933 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
937 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
938 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
940 ** Changes in behavior
942 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
943 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
944 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
945 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
946 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
949 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
953 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
954 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
956 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
957 before data copying has started.
959 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
960 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
962 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
963 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
964 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
965 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
967 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
968 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
969 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
970 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
972 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
977 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
978 for its standard streams.
980 ** Changes in behavior
982 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
983 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
984 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
985 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
986 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
987 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
989 ** Deprecated options
991 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
992 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
996 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
998 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
999 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
1000 a btrfs file system.
1002 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
1004 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
1005 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
1007 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
1008 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
1011 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
1015 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
1016 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
1017 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
1018 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
1020 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
1021 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
1022 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
1023 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
1024 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
1029 make check: two tests have been corrected
1033 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
1034 inherited from gnulib.
1037 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
1041 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
1042 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
1043 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
1044 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
1046 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
1047 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
1049 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
1051 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
1052 systems without xattr support.
1054 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
1055 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
1056 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
1058 ** Changes in behavior
1060 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
1061 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
1062 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
1063 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
1065 ** Improved robustness
1067 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
1068 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
1069 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
1070 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
1071 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
1072 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
1073 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
1074 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
1075 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1079 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
1080 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
1082 'id -G $USER' now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
1083 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
1084 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
1085 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1086 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1089 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
1093 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
1094 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
1095 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
1099 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
1100 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
1101 data was read, or on process exit.
1102 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1104 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
1105 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
1106 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
1107 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1109 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
1110 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
1111 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
1112 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1114 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
1115 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
1117 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
1118 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1120 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
1121 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
1122 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
1124 ** Changes in behavior
1126 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
1127 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
1128 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
1130 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
1131 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
1133 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
1134 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
1135 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
1138 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
1142 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
1144 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
1145 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
1146 install: Never copies xattrs
1148 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
1149 from overwriting any existing destination file
1151 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
1152 mode where this feature is available.
1154 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
1155 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
1156 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
1157 do not modify the destination at all.
1159 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
1161 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
1165 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
1166 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
1168 cp uses much less memory in some situations
1170 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
1171 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
1173 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
1174 processing the first file name
1176 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
1177 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
1178 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
1179 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1181 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
1182 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
1184 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
1185 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
1188 ** Changes in behavior
1190 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
1191 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
1193 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
1194 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
1195 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
1197 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
1198 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
1200 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
1202 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
1203 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
1204 is still marked with a '+'.
1207 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
1211 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
1212 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
1216 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
1217 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
1218 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
1219 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
1220 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
1221 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
1223 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1224 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1226 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
1227 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
1229 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
1231 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
1232 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
1233 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
1235 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
1236 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
1238 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
1239 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
1240 used to factor large numbers.
1242 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
1245 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
1247 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
1249 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
1250 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
1252 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
1253 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
1254 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
1255 maximum command-line (argv) length.
1257 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
1258 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
1259 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
1261 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
1262 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
1266 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
1268 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
1269 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
1271 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
1272 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
1274 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
1276 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
1277 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
1281 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
1282 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
1283 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
1285 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
1287 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
1288 no matter how many files are in a given directory. I.e., to list a directory
1289 with very many files, ls -1U is much more efficient.
1291 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
1292 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
1293 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
1295 ** Changes in behavior
1297 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
1298 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
1301 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
1305 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve nanosecond resolution on
1306 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimensat' and
1307 'futimens' system calls.
1311 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
1313 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
1314 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
1315 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
1317 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
1318 with no USERNAME argument.
1320 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
1321 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
1322 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
1324 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
1325 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
1326 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
1327 number of fields for some inputs.
1329 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
1330 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1332 ** Changes in behavior
1334 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1335 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1338 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1342 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1344 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1345 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1346 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1347 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1349 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1350 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1352 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1353 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1355 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1356 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1358 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1359 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1360 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1361 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1363 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1364 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1365 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1366 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1367 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1368 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1370 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1371 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1373 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1374 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1375 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1377 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1378 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1380 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1381 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1383 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1384 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1385 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1386 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1388 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1389 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1391 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1392 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1394 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1395 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1396 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1400 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1401 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1403 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1404 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1405 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1406 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1410 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1411 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1413 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1415 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1419 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1420 which have negative errno values.
1424 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1428 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1432 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1433 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1436 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1440 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1441 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1442 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1444 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1445 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1446 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1447 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1451 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1452 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1453 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1454 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1457 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1461 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1463 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1464 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1465 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1468 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1472 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1473 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1475 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1477 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1479 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1481 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1485 ** Changes in behavior
1487 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1488 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1490 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1491 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1493 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1494 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1495 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1499 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1500 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1501 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1502 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1503 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1504 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1505 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1506 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1507 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1508 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1509 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1511 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1512 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1513 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1516 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1519 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1520 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1521 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1523 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1524 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1525 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1528 ** New build options
1530 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1531 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1532 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1533 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1535 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1536 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1537 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1538 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1539 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1540 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1541 of "make check" fail.
1543 ** Remove deprecated options
1545 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1546 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1547 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1548 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1549 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1551 ** Improved robustness
1553 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1554 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1555 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1556 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1557 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1558 loss of the contents of a/f.
1560 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1561 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1565 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1566 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1567 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1569 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1570 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1571 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1572 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1574 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1575 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1576 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1577 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1578 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1579 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1580 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1581 destination is a symlink.
1583 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1585 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1586 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1588 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1589 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1591 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1593 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1594 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1596 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1597 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1599 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1602 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1603 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1605 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1606 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1608 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1609 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1610 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1611 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1613 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1614 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1615 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1617 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1618 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1619 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1621 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1622 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1623 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1624 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1626 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1627 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1628 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1630 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1631 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1633 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1634 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1636 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1638 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1639 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1640 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1642 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1643 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1645 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1646 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1648 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1649 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1651 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1652 [present in the original version]
1655 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1659 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1661 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1662 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1663 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1665 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1666 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1668 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1672 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1673 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1675 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1676 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1678 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1679 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1681 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1682 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1683 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1684 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1685 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1686 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1688 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1689 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1692 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1693 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1695 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1698 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1699 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1700 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1702 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1703 directory is unreadable.
1705 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1706 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1707 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1709 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1710 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1711 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1712 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1713 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1716 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1717 Before it would print nothing.
1719 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1721 "rm -rf D" would emit a misleading diagnostic when failing to
1722 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1723 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1724 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1725 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1726 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1727 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1728 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1730 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1734 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1735 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1736 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1738 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1739 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1740 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1741 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1744 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1748 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1749 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1750 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1751 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1752 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1753 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1754 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1756 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1757 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1758 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1759 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1760 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1761 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1762 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1763 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1765 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1766 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1767 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1770 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1774 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1775 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1777 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1778 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1779 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1781 ** Improved robustness
1783 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1784 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1785 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1788 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1792 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1793 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1794 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1795 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1796 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1798 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1802 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1805 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1809 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1810 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1811 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1812 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1814 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1815 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1817 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1818 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1819 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1822 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1824 ** Improved robustness
1826 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1827 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1829 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1830 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1831 or NFS-mounted partition.
1833 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1834 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1838 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1839 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1840 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1841 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1842 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1843 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1845 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1846 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1848 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1849 or neglect to report file removal.
1851 For the "groups" command:
1853 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1854 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1856 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1858 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1860 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1864 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1865 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1868 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1870 ** Changes in behavior
1872 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1873 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1874 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1875 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1877 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., 'rm -fr /'
1878 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1879 a final './' or '../' component.
1881 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1882 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1883 this only for pipes.
1885 ** Infrastructure changes
1887 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1888 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1889 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1890 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1894 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1895 name is "." or "..".
1897 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1898 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1899 dirent.d_type support.
1901 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1902 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1904 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1905 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1906 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1907 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1910 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1912 ** Changes in behavior
1914 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1918 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1919 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1923 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1924 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1925 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1927 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1928 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1930 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1931 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1933 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1935 ** Improved robustness
1937 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1938 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1939 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1941 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1942 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1945 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1946 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1948 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1949 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1951 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1952 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1954 ** Changes in behavior
1956 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1957 where the two are distinct.
1959 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1960 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1961 'chmod 755 DIR' and 'chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1962 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1963 similarly for 'mkdir -m 755 DIR' and 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1964 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1965 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1966 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., 'mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1967 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1968 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1969 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1970 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1971 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 'mkdir -m
1972 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but 'chmod 777 D' clears it.
1973 Conversely, Solaris 10 'mkdir -m 777 D', 'mkdir -m g-s D', and
1974 'chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1975 something like 'chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1977 'cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1978 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1979 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1981 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1982 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1983 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1984 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1987 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1988 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1992 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1993 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1994 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1995 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1997 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1998 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1999 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
2001 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
2002 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
2003 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
2004 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
2005 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
2008 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
2009 e.g., 'mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
2011 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
2012 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
2013 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
2014 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
2016 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
2017 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
2018 successful and the output is easier to parse.
2020 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
2021 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
2022 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
2023 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
2025 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
2026 and sticky) with the -m option.
2028 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
2029 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
2030 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
2031 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
2032 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
2034 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
2035 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
2037 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
2041 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
2042 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
2043 You no longer need the '-f%.f' in 'seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
2044 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
2046 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
2048 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
2050 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
2051 silently ignoring one of them.
2053 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
2054 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
2055 containing this change was 5.92.
2057 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
2058 automatically newline terminated.
2060 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
2061 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
2062 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
2063 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
2066 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
2067 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2068 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
2071 ** Scheduled for removal
2073 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
2074 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
2076 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
2077 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
2078 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
2079 command to unlink a directory.
2081 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
2082 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
2083 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
2084 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
2088 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
2089 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
2090 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
2091 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
2092 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
2093 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
2097 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
2098 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
2100 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
2102 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
2103 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
2104 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
2106 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
2107 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
2110 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
2111 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
2113 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
2114 list directories before files.
2116 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
2117 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
2118 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
2119 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
2122 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
2124 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and 'R' ordering option.
2126 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
2127 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
2128 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
2130 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2131 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2135 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
2136 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
2137 usually printing nothing.
2139 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
2141 When 'cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
2142 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
2143 them with hard-linked directories.
2145 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
2146 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
2147 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
2149 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
2150 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
2151 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
2153 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
2156 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
2157 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
2159 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
2160 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
2162 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
2163 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
2165 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
2166 all command-line arguments.
2168 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
2170 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
2172 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
2173 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
2175 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
2177 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
2178 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
2179 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
2180 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
2181 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
2183 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
2184 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
2186 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
2187 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
2188 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
2189 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
2191 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
2193 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
2197 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
2198 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
2200 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
2201 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
2203 md5sum once again defaults to using the ' ' non-binary marker
2204 (rather than the '*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
2206 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
2207 a directory like 'nonexistent/.'
2209 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
2210 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
2212 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
2214 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
2215 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
2216 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
2219 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
2221 ** Build-related bug fixes
2223 installing .mo files would fail
2226 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
2230 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
2232 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
2235 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
2239 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
2240 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
2244 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
2246 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
2247 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
2249 ** Deprecated options
2251 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
2252 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use '-k' instead.
2254 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
2258 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
2260 ** Bring back support for 'head -NUM', 'tail -NUM', etc. even when
2261 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
2262 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
2263 conforming to older POSIX versions.
2265 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
2268 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
2274 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
2279 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
2281 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
2283 date -I TIMESPEC (use 'date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
2284 od -w WIDTH (use 'od -wWIDTH' instead)
2285 pr -S STRING (use 'pr -SSTRING' instead)
2287 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
2288 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
2289 problematic usages. These include:
2291 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
2292 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
2293 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
2294 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
2295 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
2296 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
2297 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
2298 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
2299 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
2301 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
2302 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
2304 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
2305 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
2306 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
2307 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
2309 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
2310 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
2311 between binary and text files.
2313 The following programs now always use text input/output:
2317 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
2321 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
2322 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
2324 head tac tail tee tr
2325 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
2327 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
2328 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
2330 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2331 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2332 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2334 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2336 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2338 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2339 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2340 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2344 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2346 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2347 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2349 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2350 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2351 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2355 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2356 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2360 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2361 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2362 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2366 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2367 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2371 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2373 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2375 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2379 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2380 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2381 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2383 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2384 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2385 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2386 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2387 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2389 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2393 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2394 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2395 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2397 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2399 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2400 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2401 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2402 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2404 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2406 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2407 rather than silently wrapping around.
2409 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2410 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2412 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2413 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2415 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the '.'-relative
2416 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2417 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2418 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2420 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2422 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2424 ** Improved robustness
2426 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2427 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2428 no matter how large the result.
2430 ** Improved portability
2432 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2433 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2435 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2437 'rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2438 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2439 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2441 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2442 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2446 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2447 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2449 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2451 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2452 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2453 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2454 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2456 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2457 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2459 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2460 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2461 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2463 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2465 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2466 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2468 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2469 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2471 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2473 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2474 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2476 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2477 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2479 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2480 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2481 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2483 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2485 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2487 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2491 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2493 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2494 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2495 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2497 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2498 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2500 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2501 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2502 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2504 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2505 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2507 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2508 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2509 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2510 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2512 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2513 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2515 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2516 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2517 the file system does not support it.
2519 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2521 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2522 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2524 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2526 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2527 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2529 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2530 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2531 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2532 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2534 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2535 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2538 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2539 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2540 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2541 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2543 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2544 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2545 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2546 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2548 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2549 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2551 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2553 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2554 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2555 reporting incorrect results.
2559 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2560 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2562 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2565 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2567 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2568 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2570 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2571 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2573 'pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to 'pr -N' when also using
2576 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2577 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2578 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2579 the file name does not look like a page range.
2581 printf has several changes:
2583 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2584 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2586 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2587 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2588 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2590 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2591 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2594 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2595 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2597 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2598 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2600 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2602 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2603 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2605 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2607 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2609 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2610 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2611 when first encountering the directory.
2615 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2616 output; POSIX requires this.
2618 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2619 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2621 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2623 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2624 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2626 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2627 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2629 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2630 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2631 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2632 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2633 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2634 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2635 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2637 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2638 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2639 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2641 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2642 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2644 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2646 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2648 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2649 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2650 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2651 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2653 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2657 For efficiency, 'sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2658 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2659 some relatively-contrived examples like 'cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2660 are no longer safe, as 'sort' might start writing F before 'cat' is
2661 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless '-m' is used.
2663 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2664 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2665 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2667 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2668 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2670 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2671 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2673 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2674 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2675 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2676 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2677 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2679 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2680 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2682 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2683 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2685 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2687 nocreat do not create the output file
2688 excl fail if the output file already exists
2689 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2690 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2692 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2694 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2695 direct use direct I/O for data
2696 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2697 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2698 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2699 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2700 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2702 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2704 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2705 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append '\n' to the format
2708 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2709 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2710 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2711 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2712 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2713 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2715 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2716 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2718 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2721 Dates like 'January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2723 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2725 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2726 prefixed by '@'. For example, '@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2728 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2729 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2730 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2732 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2733 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2734 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2736 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2738 'date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2739 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2741 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2742 for compatibility with bash.
2744 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2746 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2747 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2748 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2749 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2751 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2752 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2754 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2755 ls supports TABSIZE.
2756 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2757 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2758 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2760 The usual '--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2763 'od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2765 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2766 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2767 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2768 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2769 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2770 an offset, not as a file name.
2772 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2773 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2775 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2776 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2778 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2779 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2781 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2782 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2783 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2785 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2786 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2788 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2789 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2793 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2795 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2797 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2801 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2802 or more arguments between partitions.
2804 'cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2805 holes in the destination.
2807 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2808 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2809 this change, if you ran 'ssh localhost', then 'nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2810 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2811 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2812 terminates immediately.
2814 'expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2816 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2818 The '|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2819 arguments are null or zero. E.g., 'expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2820 not the empty string.
2822 The '|' and '&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2823 'expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2827 'chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2828 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2829 containing '.' that happens to equal 'user.group'.
2832 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2839 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2843 'cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2844 declare stat and lstat as 'static inline' functions.
2846 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2847 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2849 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2850 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2851 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2854 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2858 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2859 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2861 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2862 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2864 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2865 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2866 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2868 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2870 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2873 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2875 ** Configuration option
2877 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2878 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2882 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2883 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2887 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2888 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2889 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2892 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2893 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2894 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2895 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2896 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2897 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2898 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2901 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2905 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2906 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2907 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2909 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2910 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2912 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2914 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2915 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2916 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2917 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2919 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2921 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2922 not just the ones that reference directories
2924 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2925 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2927 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2928 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2929 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2931 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2932 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2933 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2934 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2935 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2936 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2938 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2943 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2944 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2946 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2948 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2950 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2952 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2953 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2955 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2956 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2958 dd 'unblock' and 'sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2960 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2964 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2966 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2968 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2969 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2970 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2971 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2972 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2974 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2975 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2977 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2978 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2980 'sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2981 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2983 who -l now means 'who --login', not 'who --lookup', per POSIX.
2984 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2985 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2989 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via 'mv B b' when 'B' is
2990 the same directory entry as 'b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2991 referenced by both 'b' and 'B'. Note that this would happen only on
2992 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2993 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2994 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2995 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2996 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2997 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2998 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2999 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
3000 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
3001 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
3002 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
3004 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in '%'
3006 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
3007 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
3009 'split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
3011 'df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
3013 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
3014 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
3016 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
3018 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
3019 without a trailing newline.
3021 'tail -n0 -f FILE' and 'tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
3022 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
3024 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
3027 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
3031 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
3033 'test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
3035 'test -t', 'test --help', and 'test --version' now silently exit
3036 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
3037 'test -t 1'. To get help and version info for 'test', use
3038 '[ --help' and '[ --version'.
3040 'test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
3042 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
3043 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
3044 be printed without leading spaces.
3046 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
3047 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
3052 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
3053 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
3054 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
3056 '[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
3058 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
3059 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
3061 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
3062 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
3064 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
3065 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
3067 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
3069 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
3071 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
3073 'sort --version' and 'sort --help' fail, as they should
3074 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
3076 'su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
3078 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
3080 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
3081 byte offsets are specified.
3084 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
3087 - new program: '[' (much like 'test')
3090 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
3091 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
3092 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
3093 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
3094 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
3095 - chown: '.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
3096 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
3097 on such a system, then it still accepts '.', by default. If chown
3098 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
3099 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
3100 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
3101 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
3102 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
3103 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
3104 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
3105 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
3106 directory where M has write access.
3107 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
3108 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
3109 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
3112 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
3113 - 'du /' once again prints the '/' on the last line
3114 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
3115 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
3116 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
3117 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted 'file truncated' warning.
3118 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
3119 - df and 'readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
3120 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
3121 - 'env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
3122 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
3123 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
3124 - mv now removes 'a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
3125 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
3126 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
3127 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
3128 - date's '-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
3129 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
3130 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like '-72x'
3131 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
3132 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
3133 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
3134 appeared one additional time.
3136 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
3137 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
3138 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
3139 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
3142 - 'kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than '?') on systems
3143 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
3144 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
3145 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
3146 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
3147 Before 'rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
3148 if there were more than 338.
3150 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
3151 - false --help now exits nonzero
3154 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
3155 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
3156 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
3157 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
3160 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
3161 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of '0'
3162 * seq now accepts " " and "'" as valid format flag characters
3163 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
3164 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
3167 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
3168 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
3169 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
3170 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to "infinite" recursion
3171 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
3172 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
3173 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3176 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
3177 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
3178 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
3179 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
3180 * 'df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
3181 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
3183 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3184 under certain unusual conditions
3185 * mv and 'cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
3186 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
3189 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3190 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
3191 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
3192 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
3193 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
3194 * df now always displays under 'Filesystem', the device file name
3195 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
3196 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
3197 'df /dev/hda' would list '/dev/hda' as the 'Filesystem', rather than say
3198 /dev/hda3 (the device on which '/' is mounted), as it does now.
3199 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
3200 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
3201 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
3202 'test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
3203 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
3204 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
3207 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
3208 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
3211 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
3212 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
3213 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
3214 involving hard-linked directories
3215 * 'who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
3216 * df now displays a mount point (usually '/') for non-mounted
3217 character-special and block files
3220 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
3221 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
3222 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
3223 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
3224 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
3225 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
3226 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
3227 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
3228 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
3230 * ls dangling-symlink now prints 'dangling-symlink'.
3231 Before, it would fail with 'no such file or directory'.
3232 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
3233 attributes of 'symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
3234 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
3235 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
3236 specified on the command line.
3237 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
3238 Before, 'shred --zero file' would produce 'shred: missing file argument',
3239 and worse, 'shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
3240 the first file untouched.
3241 * readlink: new program
3242 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
3243 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
3244 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
3245 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
3246 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
3247 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
3250 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
3251 * 'ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
3252 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
3253 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
3254 * 'du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
3255 * 'du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
3256 * In the unlikely event that running 'du /' resulted in 'stat ("/", ...)'
3257 failing, du would give a diagnostic about '' (empty string) rather than '/'.
3258 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
3259 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
3260 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
3261 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
3263 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
3264 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
3265 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
3267 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
3268 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
3269 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
3270 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
3271 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
3272 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
3273 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
3274 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this 'yes|nl -s%n'
3277 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
3278 * 'ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
3281 * 'rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
3282 * 'tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
3283 * 'mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
3284 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
3285 * printf now honors the '--' command line delimiter
3286 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
3287 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
3290 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
3291 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
3293 ========================================================================
3294 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
3295 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3298 * 'rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
3300 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3301 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
3302 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
3303 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
3304 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
3305 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
3306 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
3307 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
3308 * 'rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
3309 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
3310 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
3311 The old options will continue to work for a while.
3313 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
3314 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
3315 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
3316 * 'touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
3318 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
3321 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
3323 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
3324 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
3325 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
3326 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
3327 * The obsolete usage 'touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
3328 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
3329 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3332 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3333 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3334 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3335 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3336 A missing 'B' (e.g. '1M') has the same meaning as before.
3337 A trailing 'B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3338 The nonstandard 'D' suffix (e.g. '1MD') is now obsolescent.
3339 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3340 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3341 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3342 * You can omit an integer '1' before a block size suffix,
3343 e.g. 'df -BG' is equivalent to 'df -B 1G' and to 'df --block-size=1G'.
3344 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3345 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3346 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3347 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3349 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3350 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3352 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3353 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3354 * dd once again uses 'lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3355 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3356 resort to emulating 'skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3357 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3359 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3360 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3361 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3362 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3363 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3364 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., 'chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3365 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3367 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3368 the source files in the following example:
3369 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3370 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3371 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3372 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3373 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3374 links between source files with --preserve=links
3375 * cp accepts new options:
3376 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3377 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3378 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3379 to '--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3380 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3381 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3382 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3383 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off '-i'.
3384 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3386 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3387 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3388 * mv: fix the bug whereby 'mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3389 even though it's older than dest.
3390 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3391 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3392 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3393 * 'ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3394 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3396 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3397 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3398 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3399 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3400 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3401 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3402 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3404 - The 'full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3405 '2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3406 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3408 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3409 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3410 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3411 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3412 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3413 This is the default.
3415 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3416 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3417 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3418 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3419 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3421 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3424 ========================================================================
3425 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3426 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3429 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3430 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3432 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3433 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3434 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3435 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3436 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3438 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3439 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3440 that specifies a non-directory
3443 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3444 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3445 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3446 the long option '--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3447 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3448 - 'date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use 'date --iso-8601'.
3449 - 'nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use 'nice -n NUM'.
3450 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3451 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3452 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3453 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3454 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3455 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3456 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3457 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3458 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3459 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3460 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3461 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3462 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3463 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3464 This problem arose only with relative date strings like 'last monday'.
3465 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3466 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3468 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3469 * 'date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3470 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3472 * 'date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3474 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3475 'write error' when invoked with the --version option
3477 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3478 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3479 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3480 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the 'C' locale
3481 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3483 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3484 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3485 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3486 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3487 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3489 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3491 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3492 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3493 * still more portability fixes
3494 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3495 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3497 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3499 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3501 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3503 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3504 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3505 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3506 there is any time remaining
3507 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3509 ========================================================================
3510 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3511 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3513 This package began as the union of the following:
3514 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3516 ========================================================================
3518 Copyright (C) 2001-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3520 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3521 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3522 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3523 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3524 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the "GNU Free
3525 Documentation License" file as part of this distribution.