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 ** Changes in behavior
12 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
13 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
15 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
16 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
17 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
21 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
23 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
24 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
25 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
27 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
28 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
29 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
34 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
35 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
36 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
37 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
39 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
40 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
41 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
42 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
43 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
44 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
47 ** Remove deprecated options
49 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
50 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
51 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
52 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
53 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
57 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
58 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
59 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
60 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
62 cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
63 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
64 longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
65 components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
66 d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
67 destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
68 copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
69 to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
70 doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
71 the destination is a symlink.
73 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
75 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
76 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
78 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
80 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
81 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
83 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
86 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
87 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
89 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
90 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
92 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
93 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
94 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
95 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
97 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
98 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
99 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
101 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
102 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
104 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
105 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
106 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
108 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
109 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
111 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
112 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
114 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
115 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
117 ** Improved robustness
119 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
120 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
123 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
127 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
129 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
130 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
131 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
133 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
134 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
136 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
140 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
141 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
143 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
144 support but with insufficient /proc support.
146 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
147 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
149 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
150 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
151 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
152 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
153 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
154 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
156 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
157 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
160 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
161 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
163 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
166 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
167 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
168 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
170 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
171 directory is unreadable.
173 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
174 Before it would print nothing.
176 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
180 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
181 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
182 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
184 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
185 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
186 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
187 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
190 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
194 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
195 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
196 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
197 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
198 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
199 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
200 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
202 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
203 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
204 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
205 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
206 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
207 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
208 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
209 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
211 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
212 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
213 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
216 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
220 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
221 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
223 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
224 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
225 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
227 ** Improved robustness
229 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
230 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
231 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
234 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
238 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
239 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
240 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
241 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
242 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
244 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
248 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
251 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
255 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
256 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
257 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
258 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
260 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
261 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
263 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
264 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
265 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
268 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
270 ** Improved robustness
272 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
273 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
275 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
276 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
277 or NFS-mounted partition.
279 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
280 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
284 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
285 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
286 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
287 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
288 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
289 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
291 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
292 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
294 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
295 or neglect to report file removal.
297 For the "groups" command:
299 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
300 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
302 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
304 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
306 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
310 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
311 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
314 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
316 ** Changes in behavior
318 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
319 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
320 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
321 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
323 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
324 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
325 a final `./' or `../' component.
327 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
328 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
331 ** Infrastructure changes
333 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
334 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
335 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
336 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
340 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
343 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
344 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
345 dirent.d_type support.
347 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
348 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
350 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
351 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
352 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
353 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
356 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
358 ** Changes in behavior
360 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
364 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
365 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
369 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
370 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
371 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
373 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
374 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
376 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
377 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
379 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
381 ** Improved robustness
383 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
384 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
385 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
387 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
388 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
391 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
392 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
394 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
395 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
397 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
398 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
400 ** Changes in behavior
402 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
403 where the two are distinct.
405 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
406 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
407 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
408 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
409 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
410 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
411 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
412 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
413 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
414 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
415 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
416 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
417 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
418 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
419 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
420 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
421 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
423 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
424 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
425 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
427 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
428 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
429 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
430 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
433 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
434 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
438 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
439 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
440 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
441 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
443 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
444 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
445 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
447 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
448 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
449 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
450 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
451 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
454 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
455 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
457 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
458 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
459 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
460 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
462 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
463 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
464 successful and the output is easier to parse.
466 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
467 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
468 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
469 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
471 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
472 and sticky) with the -m option.
474 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
475 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
476 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
477 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
478 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
480 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
481 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
483 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
487 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
488 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
489 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
490 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
492 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
494 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
496 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
497 silently ignoring one of them.
499 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
500 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
501 containing this change was 5.92.
503 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
504 automatically newline terminated.
506 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
507 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
508 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
509 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
512 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
513 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
514 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
517 ** Scheduled for removal
519 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
520 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
522 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
523 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
524 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
525 command to unlink a directory.
527 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
528 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
529 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
530 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
534 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
535 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
536 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
537 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
538 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
539 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
543 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
544 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
546 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
548 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
549 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
550 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
552 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
553 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
556 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
557 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
559 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
560 list directories before files.
562 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
563 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
564 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
565 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
568 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
570 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
572 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
573 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
574 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
576 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
577 list of NUL-terminated file names.
581 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
582 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
583 usually printing nothing.
585 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
587 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
588 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
589 them with hard-linked directories.
591 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
592 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
593 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
595 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
596 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
597 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
599 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
602 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
603 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
605 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
606 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
608 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
609 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
611 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
612 all command-line arguments.
614 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
616 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
618 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
619 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
621 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
623 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
624 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
625 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
626 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
627 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
629 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
630 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
632 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
633 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
634 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
635 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
637 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
639 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
643 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
644 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
646 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
647 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
649 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
650 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
652 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
653 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
655 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
656 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
658 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
660 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
661 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
662 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
665 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
667 ** Build-related bug fixes
669 installing .mo files would fail
672 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
676 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
678 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
681 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
685 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
686 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
690 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
692 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
693 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
695 ** Deprecated options
697 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
698 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
700 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
704 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
706 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
707 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
708 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
709 conforming to older POSIX versions.
711 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
714 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
720 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
725 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
727 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
729 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
730 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
731 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
733 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
734 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
735 problematic usages. These include:
737 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
738 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
739 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
740 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
741 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
742 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
743 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
744 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
745 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
747 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
748 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
750 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
751 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
752 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
753 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
755 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
756 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
757 between binary and text files.
759 The following programs now always use text input/output:
763 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
767 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
768 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
771 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
773 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
774 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
776 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
777 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
778 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
780 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
782 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
784 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
785 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
786 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
790 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
792 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
793 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
795 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
796 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
797 blocks until F contains N blocks.
801 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
802 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
806 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
807 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
808 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
812 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
813 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
817 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
819 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
821 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
825 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
826 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
827 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
829 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
830 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
831 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
832 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
833 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
835 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
839 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
840 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
841 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
843 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
845 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
846 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
847 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
848 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
850 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
852 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
853 rather than silently wrapping around.
855 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
856 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
858 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
859 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
861 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
862 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
863 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
866 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
868 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
870 ** Improved robustness
872 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
873 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
874 no matter how large the result.
876 ** Improved portability
878 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
879 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
881 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
883 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
884 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
885 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
887 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
888 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
892 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
893 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
895 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
897 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
898 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
899 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
900 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
902 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
903 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
905 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
906 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
907 categories if not specified by dircolors.
909 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
911 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
912 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
914 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
915 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
917 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
919 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
920 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
922 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
923 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
925 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
926 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
927 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
929 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
931 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
933 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
937 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
939 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
940 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
941 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
943 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
944 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
946 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
947 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
948 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
950 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
951 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
953 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
954 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
955 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
956 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
958 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
959 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
961 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
962 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
963 the file system does not support it.
965 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
967 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
968 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
970 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
972 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
973 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
975 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
976 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
977 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
978 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
980 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
981 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
984 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
985 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
986 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
987 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
989 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
990 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
991 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
992 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
994 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
995 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
997 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
999 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1000 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1001 reporting incorrect results.
1005 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1006 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1008 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1011 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1013 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1014 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1016 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1017 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1019 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1022 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1023 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1024 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1025 the file name does not look like a page range.
1027 printf has several changes:
1029 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1030 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1032 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1033 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1034 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1036 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1037 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1040 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1041 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1043 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1044 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1046 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1048 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1049 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1051 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1053 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1055 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1056 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1057 when first encountering the directory.
1061 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1062 output; POSIX requires this.
1064 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1065 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1067 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1069 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1070 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1072 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1073 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1075 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1076 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1077 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1078 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1079 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1080 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1081 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1083 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1084 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1085 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1087 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1088 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1090 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1092 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1094 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1095 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1096 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1097 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1099 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1103 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1104 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1105 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1106 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1107 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1109 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1110 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1111 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1113 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1114 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1116 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1117 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1119 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1120 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1121 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1122 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1123 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1125 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1126 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1128 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1129 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1131 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1133 nocreat do not create the output file
1134 excl fail if the output file already exists
1135 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1136 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1138 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1140 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1141 direct use direct I/O for data
1142 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1143 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1144 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1145 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1146 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1148 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1150 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1151 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1154 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1155 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1156 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1157 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1158 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1159 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1161 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1162 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1164 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1167 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1169 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1171 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1172 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1174 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1175 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1176 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1178 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1179 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1180 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1182 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1184 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1185 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1187 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1188 for compatibility with bash.
1190 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1192 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1193 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1194 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1195 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1197 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1198 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1200 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1201 ls supports TABSIZE.
1202 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1203 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1204 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1206 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1209 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1211 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1212 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1213 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1214 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1215 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1216 an offset, not as a file name.
1218 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1219 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1221 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1222 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1224 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1225 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1227 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1228 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1229 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1231 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1232 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1234 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1235 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1239 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1241 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1243 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1247 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1248 or more arguments between partitions.
1250 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1251 holes in the destination.
1253 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1254 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1255 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1256 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1257 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1258 terminates immediately.
1260 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1262 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1264 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1265 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1266 not the empty string.
1268 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1269 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1273 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1274 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1275 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1278 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1285 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1289 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1290 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1292 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1293 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1295 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1296 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1297 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1300 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1304 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1305 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1307 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1308 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1310 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1311 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1312 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1314 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1316 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1319 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1321 ** Configuration option
1323 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1324 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1328 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1329 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1333 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1334 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1335 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1338 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1339 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1340 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1341 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1342 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1343 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1344 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1347 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1351 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1352 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1353 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1355 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1356 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1358 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1360 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1361 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1362 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1363 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1365 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1367 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1368 not just the ones that reference directories
1370 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1371 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1373 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1374 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1375 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1377 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1378 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1379 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1380 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1381 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1382 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1384 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1389 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1390 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1392 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1394 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1396 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1398 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1399 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1401 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1402 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1404 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1406 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1410 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1412 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1414 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1415 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1416 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1417 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1418 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1420 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1421 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1423 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1424 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1426 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1427 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1429 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1430 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1431 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1435 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1436 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1437 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1438 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1439 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1440 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1441 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1442 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1443 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1444 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1445 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1446 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1447 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1448 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1450 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1452 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1453 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1455 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1457 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1459 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1460 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1462 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1464 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1465 without a trailing newline.
1467 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1468 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1470 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1473 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1477 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1479 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1481 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1482 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1483 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1484 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1486 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1488 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1489 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1490 be printed without leading spaces.
1492 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1493 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1498 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1499 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1500 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1502 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1504 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1505 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1507 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1508 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1510 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1511 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1513 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1515 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1517 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1519 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1520 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1522 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1524 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1526 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1527 byte offsets are specified.
1530 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1533 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1536 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1537 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1538 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1539 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1540 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1541 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1542 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1543 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1544 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1545 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1546 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1547 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1548 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1549 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1550 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1551 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1552 directory where M has write access.
1553 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1554 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1555 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1558 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1559 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1560 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1561 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1562 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1563 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1564 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1565 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1566 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1567 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1568 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1569 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1570 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1571 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1572 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1573 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1574 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1575 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1576 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1577 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1578 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1579 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1580 appeared one additional time.
1582 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1583 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1584 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1585 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1588 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1589 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1590 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1591 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1592 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1593 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1594 if there were more than 338.
1596 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1597 - false --help now exits nonzero
1600 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1601 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1602 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1603 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1606 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1607 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1608 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1609 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1610 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1613 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1614 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1615 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1616 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1617 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1618 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1619 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1622 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1623 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1624 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1625 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1626 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1627 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1629 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1630 under certain unusual conditions
1631 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1632 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1635 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1636 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1637 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1638 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1639 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1640 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1641 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1642 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1643 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1644 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1645 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1646 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1647 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1648 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1649 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1650 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1653 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1654 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1657 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1658 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1659 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1660 involving hard-linked directories
1661 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1662 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1663 character-special and block files
1666 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1667 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1668 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1669 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1670 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1671 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1672 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1673 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1674 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1676 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1677 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1678 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1679 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1680 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1681 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1682 specified on the command line.
1683 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1684 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1685 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1686 the first file untouched.
1687 * readlink: new program
1688 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1689 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1690 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1691 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1692 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1693 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1696 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1697 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1698 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1699 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1700 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1701 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1702 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1703 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1704 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1705 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1706 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1707 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1709 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1710 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1711 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1713 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1714 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1715 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1716 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1717 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1718 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1719 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1720 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1723 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1724 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1727 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1728 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1729 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1730 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1731 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1732 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1733 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1736 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1737 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1739 ========================================================================
1740 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1741 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1744 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1746 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1747 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1748 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1749 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1750 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1751 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1752 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1753 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1754 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1755 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1756 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1757 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1759 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1760 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1761 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1762 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1764 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1767 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1769 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1770 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1771 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1772 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1773 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1774 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1775 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1778 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1779 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1780 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1781 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1782 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1783 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1784 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1785 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1786 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1787 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1788 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1789 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1790 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1791 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1792 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1793 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1795 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1796 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1798 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1799 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1800 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1801 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1802 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1803 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1805 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1806 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1807 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1808 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1809 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1810 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1811 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1813 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1814 the source files in the following example:
1815 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1816 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1817 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1818 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1819 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1820 links between source files with --preserve=links
1821 * cp accepts new options:
1822 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1823 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1824 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1825 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1826 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1827 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1828 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1829 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1830 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1832 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1833 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1834 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1835 even though it's older than dest.
1836 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1837 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1838 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1839 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1840 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1842 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1843 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1844 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1845 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1846 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1847 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1848 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1850 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1851 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1852 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1854 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1855 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1856 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1857 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1858 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1859 This is the default.
1861 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1862 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1863 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1864 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1865 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1867 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1870 ========================================================================
1871 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1872 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1875 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1876 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1878 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1879 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1880 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1881 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1882 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1884 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1885 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1886 that specifies a non-directory
1889 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1890 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1891 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1892 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1893 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1894 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1895 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1896 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1897 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1898 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1899 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1900 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1901 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1902 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1903 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1904 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1905 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1906 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1907 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1908 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1909 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1910 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1911 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1912 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1914 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1915 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1916 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1918 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1920 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1921 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1923 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1924 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1925 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1926 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1927 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1929 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1930 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1931 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1932 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1933 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1935 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1937 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1938 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1939 * still more portability fixes
1940 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1941 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1943 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1945 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1947 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1949 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1950 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1951 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1952 there is any time remaining
1953 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1955 ========================================================================
1956 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1957 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1959 This package began as the union of the following:
1960 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1962 ========================================================================
1964 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1967 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1968 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1969 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1970 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1971 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1972 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.