1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
7 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
8 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
10 ** Programs no longer installed by default
14 ** Changes in behavior
16 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
17 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
19 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
20 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
21 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
25 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
27 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
28 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
29 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
31 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
32 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
33 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
38 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
39 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
40 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
41 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
43 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
44 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
45 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
46 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
47 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
48 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
51 ** Remove deprecated options
53 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
54 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
55 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
56 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
57 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
61 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
62 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
63 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
64 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
66 cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
67 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
68 longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
69 components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
70 d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
71 destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
72 copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
73 to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
74 doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
75 the destination is a symlink.
77 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
79 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
80 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
82 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
83 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
85 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
87 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
88 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
90 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
93 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
94 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
96 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
97 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
99 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
100 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
101 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
102 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
104 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
105 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
106 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
108 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
109 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
110 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
112 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
113 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
114 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
115 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
117 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
118 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
120 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
121 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
122 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
124 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
125 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
127 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
128 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
130 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
131 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
133 ** Improved robustness
135 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
136 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
139 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
143 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
145 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
146 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
147 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
149 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
150 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
152 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
156 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
157 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
159 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
160 support but with insufficient /proc support.
162 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
163 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
165 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
166 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
167 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
168 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
169 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
170 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
172 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
173 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
176 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
177 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
179 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
182 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
183 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
184 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
186 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
187 directory is unreadable.
189 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
190 Before it would print nothing.
192 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
196 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
197 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
198 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
200 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
201 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
202 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
203 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
206 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
210 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
211 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
212 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
213 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
214 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
215 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
216 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
218 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
219 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
220 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
221 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
222 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
223 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
224 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
225 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
227 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
228 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
229 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
232 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
236 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
237 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
239 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
240 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
241 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
243 ** Improved robustness
245 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
246 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
247 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
250 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
254 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
255 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
256 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
257 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
258 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
260 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
264 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
267 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
271 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
272 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
273 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
274 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
276 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
277 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
279 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
280 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
281 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
284 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
286 ** Improved robustness
288 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
289 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
291 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
292 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
293 or NFS-mounted partition.
295 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
296 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
300 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
301 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
302 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
303 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
304 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
305 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
307 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
308 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
310 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
311 or neglect to report file removal.
313 For the "groups" command:
315 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
316 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
318 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
320 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
322 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
326 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
327 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
330 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
332 ** Changes in behavior
334 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
335 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
336 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
337 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
339 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
340 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
341 a final `./' or `../' component.
343 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
344 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
347 ** Infrastructure changes
349 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
350 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
351 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
352 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
356 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
359 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
360 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
361 dirent.d_type support.
363 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
364 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
366 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
367 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
368 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
369 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
372 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
374 ** Changes in behavior
376 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
380 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
381 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
385 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
386 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
387 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
389 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
390 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
392 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
393 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
395 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
397 ** Improved robustness
399 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
400 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
401 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
403 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
404 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
407 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
408 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
410 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
411 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
413 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
414 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
416 ** Changes in behavior
418 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
419 where the two are distinct.
421 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
422 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
423 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
424 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
425 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
426 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
427 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
428 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
429 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
430 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
431 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
432 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
433 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
434 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
435 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
436 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
437 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
439 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
440 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
441 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
443 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
444 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
445 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
446 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
449 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
450 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
454 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
455 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
456 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
457 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
459 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
460 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
461 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
463 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
464 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
465 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
466 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
467 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
470 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
471 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
473 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
474 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
475 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
476 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
478 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
479 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
480 successful and the output is easier to parse.
482 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
483 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
484 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
485 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
487 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
488 and sticky) with the -m option.
490 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
491 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
492 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
493 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
494 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
496 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
497 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
499 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
503 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
504 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
505 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
506 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
508 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
510 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
512 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
513 silently ignoring one of them.
515 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
516 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
517 containing this change was 5.92.
519 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
520 automatically newline terminated.
522 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
523 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
524 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
525 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
528 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
529 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
530 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
533 ** Scheduled for removal
535 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
536 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
538 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
539 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
540 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
541 command to unlink a directory.
543 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
544 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
545 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
546 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
550 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
551 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
552 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
553 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
554 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
555 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
559 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
560 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
562 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
564 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
565 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
566 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
568 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
569 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
572 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
573 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
575 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
576 list directories before files.
578 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
579 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
580 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
581 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
584 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
586 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
588 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
589 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
590 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
592 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
593 list of NUL-terminated file names.
597 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
598 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
599 usually printing nothing.
601 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
603 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
604 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
605 them with hard-linked directories.
607 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
608 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
609 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
611 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
612 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
613 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
615 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
618 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
619 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
621 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
622 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
624 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
625 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
627 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
628 all command-line arguments.
630 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
632 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
634 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
635 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
637 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
639 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
640 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
641 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
642 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
643 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
645 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
646 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
648 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
649 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
650 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
651 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
653 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
655 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
659 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
660 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
662 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
663 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
665 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
666 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
668 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
669 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
671 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
672 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
674 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
676 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
677 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
678 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
681 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
683 ** Build-related bug fixes
685 installing .mo files would fail
688 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
692 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
694 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
697 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
701 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
702 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
706 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
708 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
709 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
711 ** Deprecated options
713 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
714 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
716 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
720 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
722 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
723 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
724 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
725 conforming to older POSIX versions.
727 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
730 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
736 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
741 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
743 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
745 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
746 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
747 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
749 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
750 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
751 problematic usages. These include:
753 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
754 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
755 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
756 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
757 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
758 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
759 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
760 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
761 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
763 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
764 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
766 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
767 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
768 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
769 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
771 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
772 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
773 between binary and text files.
775 The following programs now always use text input/output:
779 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
783 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
784 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
787 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
789 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
790 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
792 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
793 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
794 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
796 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
798 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
800 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
801 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
802 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
806 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
808 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
809 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
811 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
812 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
813 blocks until F contains N blocks.
817 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
818 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
822 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
823 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
824 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
828 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
829 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
833 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
835 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
837 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
841 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
842 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
843 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
845 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
846 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
847 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
848 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
849 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
851 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
855 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
856 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
857 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
859 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
861 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
862 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
863 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
864 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
866 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
868 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
869 rather than silently wrapping around.
871 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
872 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
874 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
875 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
877 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
878 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
879 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
882 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
884 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
886 ** Improved robustness
888 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
889 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
890 no matter how large the result.
892 ** Improved portability
894 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
895 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
897 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
899 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
900 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
901 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
903 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
904 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
908 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
909 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
911 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
913 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
914 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
915 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
916 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
918 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
919 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
921 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
922 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
923 categories if not specified by dircolors.
925 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
927 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
928 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
930 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
931 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
933 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
935 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
936 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
938 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
939 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
941 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
942 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
943 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
945 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
947 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
949 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
953 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
955 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
956 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
957 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
959 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
960 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
962 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
963 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
964 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
966 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
967 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
969 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
970 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
971 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
972 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
974 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
975 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
977 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
978 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
979 the file system does not support it.
981 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
983 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
984 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
986 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
988 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
989 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
991 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
992 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
993 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
994 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
996 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
997 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1000 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1001 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1002 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1003 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1005 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1006 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1007 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1008 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1010 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1011 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1013 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1015 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1016 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1017 reporting incorrect results.
1021 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1022 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1024 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1027 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1029 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1030 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1032 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1033 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1035 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1038 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1039 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1040 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1041 the file name does not look like a page range.
1043 printf has several changes:
1045 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1046 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1048 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1049 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1050 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1052 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1053 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1056 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1057 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1059 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1060 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1062 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1064 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1065 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1067 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1069 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1071 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1072 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1073 when first encountering the directory.
1077 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1078 output; POSIX requires this.
1080 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1081 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1083 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1085 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1086 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1088 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1089 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1091 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1092 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1093 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1094 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1095 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1096 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1097 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1099 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1100 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1101 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1103 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1104 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1106 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1108 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1110 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1111 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1112 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1113 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1115 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1119 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1120 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1121 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1122 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1123 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1125 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1126 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1127 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1129 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1130 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1132 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1133 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1135 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1136 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1137 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1138 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1139 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1141 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1142 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1144 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1145 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1147 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1149 nocreat do not create the output file
1150 excl fail if the output file already exists
1151 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1152 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1154 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1156 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1157 direct use direct I/O for data
1158 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1159 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1160 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1161 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1162 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1164 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1166 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1167 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1170 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1171 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1172 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1173 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1174 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1175 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1177 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1178 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1180 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1183 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1185 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1187 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1188 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1190 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1191 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1192 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1194 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1195 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1196 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1198 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1200 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1201 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1203 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1204 for compatibility with bash.
1206 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1208 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1209 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1210 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1211 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1213 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1214 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1216 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1217 ls supports TABSIZE.
1218 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1219 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1220 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1222 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1225 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1227 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1228 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1229 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1230 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1231 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1232 an offset, not as a file name.
1234 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1235 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1237 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1238 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1240 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1241 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1243 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1244 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1245 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1247 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1248 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1250 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1251 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1255 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1257 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1259 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1263 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1264 or more arguments between partitions.
1266 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1267 holes in the destination.
1269 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1270 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1271 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1272 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1273 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1274 terminates immediately.
1276 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1278 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1280 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1281 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1282 not the empty string.
1284 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1285 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1289 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1290 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1291 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1294 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1301 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1305 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1306 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1308 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1309 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1311 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1312 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1313 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1316 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1320 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1321 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1323 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1324 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1326 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1327 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1328 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1330 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1332 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1335 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1337 ** Configuration option
1339 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1340 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1344 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1345 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1349 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1350 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1351 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1354 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1355 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1356 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1357 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1358 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1359 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1360 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1363 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1367 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1368 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1369 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1371 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1372 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1374 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1376 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1377 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1378 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1379 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1381 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1383 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1384 not just the ones that reference directories
1386 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1387 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1389 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1390 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1391 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1393 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1394 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1395 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1396 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1397 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1398 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1400 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1405 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1406 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1408 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1410 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1412 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1414 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1415 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1417 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1418 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1420 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1422 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1426 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1428 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1430 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1431 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1432 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1433 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1434 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1436 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1437 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1439 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1440 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1442 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1443 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1445 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1446 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1447 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1451 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1452 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1453 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1454 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1455 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1456 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1457 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1458 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1459 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1460 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1461 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1462 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1463 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1464 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1466 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1468 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1469 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1471 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1473 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1475 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1476 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1478 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1480 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1481 without a trailing newline.
1483 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1484 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1486 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1489 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1493 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1495 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1497 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1498 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1499 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1500 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1502 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1504 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1505 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1506 be printed without leading spaces.
1508 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1509 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1514 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1515 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1516 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1518 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1520 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1521 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1523 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1524 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1526 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1527 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1529 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1531 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1533 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1535 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1536 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1538 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1540 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1542 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1543 byte offsets are specified.
1546 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1549 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1552 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1553 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1554 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1555 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1556 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1557 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1558 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1559 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1560 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1561 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1562 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1563 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1564 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1565 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1566 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1567 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1568 directory where M has write access.
1569 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1570 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1571 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1574 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1575 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1576 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1577 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1578 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1579 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1580 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1581 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1582 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1583 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1584 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1585 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1586 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1587 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1588 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1589 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1590 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1591 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1592 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1593 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1594 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1595 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1596 appeared one additional time.
1598 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1599 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1600 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1601 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1604 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1605 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1606 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1607 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1608 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1609 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1610 if there were more than 338.
1612 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1613 - false --help now exits nonzero
1616 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1617 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1618 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1619 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1622 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1623 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1624 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1625 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1626 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1629 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1630 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1631 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1632 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1633 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1634 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1635 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1638 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1639 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1640 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1641 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1642 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1643 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1645 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1646 under certain unusual conditions
1647 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1648 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1651 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1652 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1653 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1654 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1655 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1656 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1657 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1658 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1659 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1660 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1661 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1662 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1663 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1664 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1665 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1666 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1669 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1670 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1673 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1674 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1675 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1676 involving hard-linked directories
1677 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1678 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1679 character-special and block files
1682 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1683 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1684 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1685 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1686 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1687 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1688 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1689 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1690 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1692 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1693 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1694 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1695 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1696 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1697 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1698 specified on the command line.
1699 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1700 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1701 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1702 the first file untouched.
1703 * readlink: new program
1704 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1705 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1706 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1707 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1708 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1709 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1712 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1713 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1714 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1715 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1716 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1717 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1718 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1719 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1720 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1721 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1722 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1723 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1725 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1726 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1727 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1729 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1730 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1731 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1732 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1733 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1734 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1735 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1736 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1739 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1740 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1743 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1744 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1745 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1746 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1747 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1748 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1749 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1752 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1753 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1755 ========================================================================
1756 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1757 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1760 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1762 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1763 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1764 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1765 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1766 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1767 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1768 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1769 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1770 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1771 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1772 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1773 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1775 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1776 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1777 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1778 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1780 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1783 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1785 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1786 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1787 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1788 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1789 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1790 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1791 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1794 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1795 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1796 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1797 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1798 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1799 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1800 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1801 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1802 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1803 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1804 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1805 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1806 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1807 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1808 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1809 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1811 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1812 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1814 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1815 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1816 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1817 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1818 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1819 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1821 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1822 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1823 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1824 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1825 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1826 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1827 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1829 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1830 the source files in the following example:
1831 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1832 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1833 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1834 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1835 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1836 links between source files with --preserve=links
1837 * cp accepts new options:
1838 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1839 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1840 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1841 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1842 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1843 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1844 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1845 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1846 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1848 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1849 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1850 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1851 even though it's older than dest.
1852 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1853 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1854 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1855 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1856 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1858 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1859 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1860 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1861 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1862 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1863 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1864 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1866 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1867 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1868 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1870 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1871 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1872 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1873 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1874 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1875 This is the default.
1877 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1878 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1879 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1880 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1881 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1883 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1886 ========================================================================
1887 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1888 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1891 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1892 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1894 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1895 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1896 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1897 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1898 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1900 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1901 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1902 that specifies a non-directory
1905 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1906 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1907 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1908 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1909 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1910 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1911 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1912 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1913 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1914 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1915 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1916 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1917 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1918 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1919 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1920 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1921 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1922 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1923 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1924 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1925 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1926 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1927 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1928 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1930 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1931 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1932 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1934 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1936 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1937 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1939 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1940 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1941 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1942 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1943 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1945 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1946 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1947 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1948 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1949 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1951 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1953 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1954 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1955 * still more portability fixes
1956 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1957 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1959 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1961 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1963 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1965 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1966 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1967 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1968 there is any time remaining
1969 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1971 ========================================================================
1972 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1973 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1975 This package began as the union of the following:
1976 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1978 ========================================================================
1980 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1983 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1984 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1985 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1986 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1987 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1988 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.