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 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
76 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
78 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
79 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
81 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
83 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
84 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
86 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
89 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
90 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
92 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
93 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
95 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
96 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
97 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
98 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
100 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
101 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
102 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
104 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
105 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
106 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
108 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
109 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
110 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
111 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
113 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
114 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
116 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
117 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
118 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
120 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
121 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
123 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
124 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
126 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
127 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
129 ** Improved robustness
131 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
132 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
135 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
139 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
141 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
142 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
143 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
145 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
146 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
148 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
152 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
153 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
155 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
156 support but with insufficient /proc support.
158 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
159 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
161 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
162 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
163 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
164 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
165 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
166 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
168 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
169 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
172 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
173 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
175 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
178 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
179 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
180 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
182 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
183 directory is unreadable.
185 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
186 Before it would print nothing.
188 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
192 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
193 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
194 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
196 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
197 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
198 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
199 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
202 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
206 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
207 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
208 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
209 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
210 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
211 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
212 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
214 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
215 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
216 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
217 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
218 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
219 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
220 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
221 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
223 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
224 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
225 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
228 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
232 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
233 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
235 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
236 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
237 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
239 ** Improved robustness
241 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
242 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
243 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
246 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
250 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
251 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
252 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
253 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
254 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
256 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
260 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
263 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
267 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
268 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
269 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
270 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
272 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
273 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
275 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
276 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
277 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
280 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
282 ** Improved robustness
284 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
285 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
287 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
288 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
289 or NFS-mounted partition.
291 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
292 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
296 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
297 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
298 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
299 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
300 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
301 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
303 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
304 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
306 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
307 or neglect to report file removal.
309 For the "groups" command:
311 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
312 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
314 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
316 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
318 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
322 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
323 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
326 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
328 ** Changes in behavior
330 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
331 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
332 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
333 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
335 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
336 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
337 a final `./' or `../' component.
339 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
340 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
343 ** Infrastructure changes
345 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
346 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
347 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
348 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
352 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
355 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
356 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
357 dirent.d_type support.
359 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
360 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
362 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
363 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
364 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
365 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
368 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
370 ** Changes in behavior
372 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
376 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
377 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
381 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
382 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
383 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
385 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
386 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
388 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
389 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
391 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
393 ** Improved robustness
395 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
396 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
397 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
399 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
400 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
403 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
404 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
406 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
407 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
409 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
410 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
412 ** Changes in behavior
414 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
415 where the two are distinct.
417 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
418 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
419 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
420 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
421 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
422 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
423 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
424 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
425 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
426 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
427 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
428 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
429 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
430 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
431 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
432 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
433 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
435 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
436 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
437 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
439 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
440 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
441 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
442 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
445 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
446 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
450 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
451 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
452 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
453 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
455 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
456 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
457 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
459 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
460 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
461 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
462 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
463 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
466 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
467 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
469 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
470 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
471 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
472 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
474 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
475 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
476 successful and the output is easier to parse.
478 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
479 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
480 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
481 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
483 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
484 and sticky) with the -m option.
486 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
487 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
488 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
489 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
490 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
492 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
493 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
495 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
499 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
500 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
501 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
502 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
504 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
506 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
508 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
509 silently ignoring one of them.
511 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
512 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
513 containing this change was 5.92.
515 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
516 automatically newline terminated.
518 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
519 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
520 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
521 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
524 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
525 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
526 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
529 ** Scheduled for removal
531 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
532 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
534 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
535 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
536 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
537 command to unlink a directory.
539 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
540 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
541 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
542 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
546 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
547 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
548 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
549 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
550 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
551 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
555 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
556 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
558 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
560 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
561 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
562 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
564 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
565 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
568 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
569 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
571 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
572 list directories before files.
574 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
575 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
576 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
577 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
580 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
582 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
584 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
585 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
586 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
588 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
589 list of NUL-terminated file names.
593 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
594 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
595 usually printing nothing.
597 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
599 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
600 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
601 them with hard-linked directories.
603 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
604 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
605 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
607 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
608 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
609 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
611 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
614 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
615 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
617 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
618 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
620 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
621 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
623 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
624 all command-line arguments.
626 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
628 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
630 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
631 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
633 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
635 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
636 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
637 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
638 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
639 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
641 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
642 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
644 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
645 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
646 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
647 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
649 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
651 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
655 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
656 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
658 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
659 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
661 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
662 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
664 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
665 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
667 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
668 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
670 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
672 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
673 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
674 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
677 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
679 ** Build-related bug fixes
681 installing .mo files would fail
684 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
688 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
690 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
693 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
697 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
698 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
702 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
704 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
705 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
707 ** Deprecated options
709 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
710 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
712 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
716 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
718 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
719 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
720 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
721 conforming to older POSIX versions.
723 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
726 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
732 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
737 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
739 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
741 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
742 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
743 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
745 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
746 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
747 problematic usages. These include:
749 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
750 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
751 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
752 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
753 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
754 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
755 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
756 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
757 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
759 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
760 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
762 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
763 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
764 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
765 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
767 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
768 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
769 between binary and text files.
771 The following programs now always use text input/output:
775 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
779 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
780 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
783 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
785 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
786 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
788 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
789 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
790 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
792 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
794 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
796 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
797 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
798 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
802 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
804 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
805 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
807 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
808 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
809 blocks until F contains N blocks.
813 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
814 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
818 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
819 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
820 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
824 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
825 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
829 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
831 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
833 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
837 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
838 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
839 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
841 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
842 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
843 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
844 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
845 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
847 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
851 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
852 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
853 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
855 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
857 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
858 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
859 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
860 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
862 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
864 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
865 rather than silently wrapping around.
867 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
868 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
870 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
871 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
873 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
874 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
875 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
878 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
880 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
882 ** Improved robustness
884 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
885 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
886 no matter how large the result.
888 ** Improved portability
890 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
891 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
893 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
895 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
896 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
897 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
899 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
900 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
904 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
905 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
907 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
909 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
910 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
911 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
912 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
914 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
915 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
917 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
918 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
919 categories if not specified by dircolors.
921 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
923 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
924 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
926 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
927 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
929 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
931 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
932 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
934 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
935 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
937 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
938 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
939 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
941 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
943 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
945 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
949 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
951 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
952 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
953 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
955 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
956 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
958 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
959 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
960 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
962 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
963 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
965 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
966 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
967 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
968 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
970 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
971 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
973 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
974 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
975 the file system does not support it.
977 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
979 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
980 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
982 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
984 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
985 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
987 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
988 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
989 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
990 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
992 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
993 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
996 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
997 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
998 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
999 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1001 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1002 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1003 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1004 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1006 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1007 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1009 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1011 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1012 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1013 reporting incorrect results.
1017 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1018 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1020 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1023 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1025 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1026 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1028 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1029 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1031 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1034 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1035 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1036 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1037 the file name does not look like a page range.
1039 printf has several changes:
1041 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1042 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1044 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1045 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1046 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1048 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1049 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1052 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1053 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1055 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1056 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1058 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1060 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1061 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1063 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1065 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1067 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1068 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1069 when first encountering the directory.
1073 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1074 output; POSIX requires this.
1076 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1077 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1079 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1081 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1082 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1084 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1085 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1087 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1088 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1089 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1090 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1091 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1092 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1093 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1095 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1096 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1097 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1099 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1100 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1102 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1104 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1106 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1107 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1108 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1109 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1111 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1115 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1116 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1117 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1118 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1119 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1121 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1122 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1123 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1125 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1126 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1128 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1129 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1131 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1132 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1133 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1134 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1135 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1137 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1138 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1140 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1141 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1143 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1145 nocreat do not create the output file
1146 excl fail if the output file already exists
1147 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1148 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1150 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1152 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1153 direct use direct I/O for data
1154 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1155 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1156 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1157 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1158 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1160 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1162 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1163 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1166 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1167 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1168 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1169 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1170 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1171 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1173 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1174 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1176 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1179 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1181 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1183 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1184 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1186 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1187 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1188 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1190 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1191 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1192 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1194 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1196 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1197 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1199 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1200 for compatibility with bash.
1202 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1204 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1205 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1206 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1207 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1209 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1210 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1212 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1213 ls supports TABSIZE.
1214 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1215 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1216 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1218 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1221 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1223 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1224 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1225 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1226 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1227 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1228 an offset, not as a file name.
1230 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1231 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1233 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1234 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1236 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1237 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1239 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1240 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1241 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1243 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1244 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1246 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1247 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1251 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1253 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1255 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1259 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1260 or more arguments between partitions.
1262 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1263 holes in the destination.
1265 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1266 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1267 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1268 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1269 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1270 terminates immediately.
1272 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1274 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1276 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1277 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1278 not the empty string.
1280 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1281 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1285 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1286 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1287 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1290 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1297 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1301 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1302 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1304 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1305 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1307 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1308 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1309 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1312 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1316 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1317 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1319 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1320 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1322 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1323 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1324 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1326 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1328 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1331 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1333 ** Configuration option
1335 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1336 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1340 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1341 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1345 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1346 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1347 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1350 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1351 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1352 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1353 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1354 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1355 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1356 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1359 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1363 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1364 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1365 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1367 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1368 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1370 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1372 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1373 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1374 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1375 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1377 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1379 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1380 not just the ones that reference directories
1382 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1383 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1385 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1386 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1387 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1389 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1390 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1391 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1392 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1393 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1394 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1396 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1401 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1402 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1404 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1406 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1408 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1410 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1411 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1413 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1414 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1416 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1418 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1422 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1424 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1426 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1427 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1428 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1429 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1430 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1432 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1433 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1435 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1436 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1438 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1439 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1441 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1442 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1443 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1447 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1448 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1449 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1450 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1451 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1452 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1453 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1454 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1455 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1456 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1457 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1458 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1459 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1460 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1462 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1464 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1465 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1467 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1469 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1471 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1472 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1474 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1476 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1477 without a trailing newline.
1479 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1480 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1482 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1485 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1489 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1491 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1493 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1494 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1495 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1496 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1498 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1500 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1501 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1502 be printed without leading spaces.
1504 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1505 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1510 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1511 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1512 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1514 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1516 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1517 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1519 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1520 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1522 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1523 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1525 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1527 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1529 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1531 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1532 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1534 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1536 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1538 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1539 byte offsets are specified.
1542 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1545 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1548 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1549 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1550 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1551 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1552 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1553 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1554 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1555 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1556 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1557 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1558 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1559 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1560 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1561 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1562 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1563 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1564 directory where M has write access.
1565 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1566 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1567 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1570 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1571 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1572 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1573 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1574 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1575 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1576 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1577 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1578 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1579 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1580 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1581 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1582 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1583 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1584 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1585 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1586 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1587 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1588 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1589 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1590 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1591 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1592 appeared one additional time.
1594 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1595 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1596 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1597 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1600 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1601 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1602 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1603 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1604 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1605 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1606 if there were more than 338.
1608 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1609 - false --help now exits nonzero
1612 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1613 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1614 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1615 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1618 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1619 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1620 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1621 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1622 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1625 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1626 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1627 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1628 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1629 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1630 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1631 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1634 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1635 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1636 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1637 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1638 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1639 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1641 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1642 under certain unusual conditions
1643 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1644 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1647 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1648 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1649 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1650 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1651 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1652 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1653 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1654 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1655 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1656 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1657 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1658 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1659 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1660 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1661 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1662 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1665 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1666 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1669 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1670 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1671 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1672 involving hard-linked directories
1673 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1674 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1675 character-special and block files
1678 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1679 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1680 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1681 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1682 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1683 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1684 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1685 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1686 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1688 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1689 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1690 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1691 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1692 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1693 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1694 specified on the command line.
1695 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1696 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1697 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1698 the first file untouched.
1699 * readlink: new program
1700 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1701 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1702 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1703 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1704 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1705 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1708 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1709 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1710 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1711 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1712 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1713 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1714 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1715 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1716 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1717 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1718 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1719 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1721 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1722 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1723 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1725 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1726 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1727 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1728 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1729 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1730 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1731 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1732 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1735 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1736 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1739 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1740 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1741 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1742 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1743 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1744 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1745 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1748 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1749 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1751 ========================================================================
1752 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1753 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1756 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1758 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1759 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1760 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1761 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1762 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1763 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1764 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1765 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1766 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1767 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1768 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1769 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1771 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1772 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1773 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1774 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1776 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1779 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1781 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1782 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1783 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1784 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1785 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1786 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1787 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1790 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1791 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1792 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1793 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1794 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1795 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1796 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1797 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1798 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1799 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1800 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1801 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1802 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1803 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1804 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1805 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1807 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1808 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1810 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1811 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1812 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1813 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1814 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1815 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1817 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1818 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1819 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1820 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1821 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1822 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1823 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1825 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1826 the source files in the following example:
1827 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1828 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1829 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1830 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1831 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1832 links between source files with --preserve=links
1833 * cp accepts new options:
1834 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1835 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1836 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1837 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1838 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1839 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1840 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1841 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1842 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1844 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1845 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1846 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1847 even though it's older than dest.
1848 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1849 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1850 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1851 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1852 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1854 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1855 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1856 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1857 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1858 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1859 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1860 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1862 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1863 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1864 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1866 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1867 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1868 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1869 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1870 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1871 This is the default.
1873 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1874 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1875 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1876 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1877 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1879 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1882 ========================================================================
1883 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1884 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1887 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1888 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1890 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1891 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1892 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1893 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1894 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1896 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1897 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1898 that specifies a non-directory
1901 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1902 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1903 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1904 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1905 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1906 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1907 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1908 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1909 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1910 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1911 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1912 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1913 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1914 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1915 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1916 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1917 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1918 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1919 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1920 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1921 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1922 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1923 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1924 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1926 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1927 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1928 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1930 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1932 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1933 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1935 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1936 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1937 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1938 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1939 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1941 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1942 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1943 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1944 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1945 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1947 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1949 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1950 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1951 * still more portability fixes
1952 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1953 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1955 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1957 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1959 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1961 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1962 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1963 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1964 there is any time remaining
1965 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1967 ========================================================================
1968 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1969 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1971 This package began as the union of the following:
1972 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1974 ========================================================================
1976 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1979 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1980 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1981 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1982 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1983 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1984 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.