1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
8 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
9 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
10 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
12 touch -a once again guarantees that a file's change time is
13 adjusted, working around a bug in current Linux kernels.
14 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
17 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
21 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
22 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
24 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
25 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
27 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
28 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
29 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
30 the presence of the empty string argument.
31 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
33 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
34 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
35 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
36 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
38 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
39 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
41 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
42 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
43 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
45 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
46 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
47 and with a malicious user on the same system
48 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
49 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
52 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
56 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
57 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
58 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
60 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
61 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
62 offending directory and all "contents."
64 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
65 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
66 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
68 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
69 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
70 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
72 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
73 processes will not intersperse their output.
74 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
75 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
77 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
78 output the name of the file to stdout.
79 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
81 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
82 call fails with errno == EACCES.
83 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
85 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
86 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
89 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
90 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
91 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
93 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
94 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
95 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
96 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
97 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
98 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
100 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
101 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
102 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
103 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
105 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
106 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
108 ** Changes in behavior
110 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
111 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
112 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
113 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
114 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
116 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
117 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
118 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
119 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
121 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
123 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
124 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
125 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
126 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
127 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
131 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
135 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
136 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
138 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
139 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
141 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
142 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
143 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
145 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
146 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
149 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
153 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
154 when the source file doesn't have write access.
155 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
157 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
158 to accommodate leap seconds.
159 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
161 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
162 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
163 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
165 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
167 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
168 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
169 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
171 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
172 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
173 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
174 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
175 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
179 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
180 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
181 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
182 directory or a symlink to a directory.
184 ** Changes in behavior
186 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
187 environment variable is set.
189 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
190 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
191 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
195 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
196 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
197 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
198 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
200 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
201 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
202 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
203 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
207 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
208 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
209 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
211 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
212 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
213 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
214 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
215 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
216 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
219 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
220 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
223 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
227 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
228 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
229 and libraries tested at configure time.
230 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
232 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
233 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
235 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
236 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
238 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
239 printing a summary to stderr.
240 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
242 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
243 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
244 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
246 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
247 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
249 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
250 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
251 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
252 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
254 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
255 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
256 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
257 which is relatively unusual.
258 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
260 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
261 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
262 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
263 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
264 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
265 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
266 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
270 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
271 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
272 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
273 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
274 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
278 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
279 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
281 ** Changes in behavior
283 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
284 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
285 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
286 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
287 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
290 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
294 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
295 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
297 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
298 before data copying has started.
300 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
301 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
303 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
304 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
305 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
306 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
308 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
309 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
310 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
311 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
313 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
318 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
319 for its standard streams.
321 ** Changes in behavior
323 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
324 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
325 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
326 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
327 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
328 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
330 ** Deprecated options
332 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
333 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
337 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
339 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
340 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
343 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
345 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
346 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
348 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
349 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
352 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
356 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
357 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
358 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
359 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
361 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
362 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
363 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
364 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
365 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
370 make check: two tests have been corrected
374 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
375 inherited from gnulib.
378 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
382 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
383 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
384 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
385 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
387 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
388 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
390 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
392 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
393 systems without xattr support.
395 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
396 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
397 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
399 ** Changes in behavior
401 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
402 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
403 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
404 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
406 ** Improved robustness
408 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
409 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
410 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
411 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
412 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
413 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
414 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
415 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
416 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
420 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
421 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
423 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
424 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
425 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
426 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
427 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
430 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
434 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
435 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
436 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
440 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
441 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
442 data was read, or on process exit.
443 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
445 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
446 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
447 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
448 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
450 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
451 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
452 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
453 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
455 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
456 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
458 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
459 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
461 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
462 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
463 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
465 ** Changes in behavior
467 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
468 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
469 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
471 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
472 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
474 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
475 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
476 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
479 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
483 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
485 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
486 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
487 install: Never copies xattrs
489 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
490 from overwriting any existing destination file
492 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
493 mode where this feature is available.
495 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
496 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
497 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
498 do not modify the destination at all.
500 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
502 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
506 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
507 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
509 cp uses much less memory in some situations
511 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
512 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
514 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
515 processing the first file name
517 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
518 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
519 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
520 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
522 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
523 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
525 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
526 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
529 ** Changes in behavior
531 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
532 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
534 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
535 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
536 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
538 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
539 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
541 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
543 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
544 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
545 is still marked with a '+'.
548 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
552 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
553 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
557 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
558 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
559 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
560 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
561 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
562 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
564 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
565 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
567 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
568 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
570 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
572 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
573 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
574 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
576 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
577 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
579 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
580 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
581 used to factor large numbers.
583 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
586 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
588 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
590 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
591 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
593 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
594 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
595 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
596 maximum command-line (argv) length.
598 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
599 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
600 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
602 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
603 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
607 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
609 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
610 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
612 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
613 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
615 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
617 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
618 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
622 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
623 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
624 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
626 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
628 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
629 no matter how many files are in a given directory
631 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
632 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
633 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
635 ** Changes in behavior
637 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
638 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
641 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
645 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
647 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
648 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
649 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
651 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
652 with no USERNAME argument.
654 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
655 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
656 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
658 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
659 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
660 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
661 number of fields for some inputs.
663 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
664 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
666 ** Changes in behavior
668 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
669 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
672 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
676 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
678 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
679 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
680 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
681 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
683 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
684 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
686 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
687 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
689 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
690 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
692 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
693 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
694 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
695 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
697 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
698 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
699 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
700 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
701 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
702 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
704 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
705 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
707 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
708 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
709 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
711 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
712 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
714 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
715 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
717 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
718 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
719 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
720 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
722 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
723 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
725 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
726 in more cases when a directory is empty.
728 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
729 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
730 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
734 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
735 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
737 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
738 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
739 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
740 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
744 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
745 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
747 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
749 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
753 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
754 which have negative errno values.
758 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
762 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
766 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
767 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
770 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
774 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
775 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
776 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
778 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
779 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
780 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
781 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
785 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
786 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
787 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
788 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
791 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
795 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
797 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
798 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
799 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
802 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
806 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
807 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
809 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
811 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
813 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
815 ** Programs no longer installed by default
819 ** Changes in behavior
821 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
822 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
824 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
825 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
827 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
828 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
829 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
833 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
834 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
835 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
836 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
837 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
838 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
839 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
840 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
841 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
842 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
843 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
845 The following commands and options now support the standard size
846 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
847 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
850 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
853 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
854 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
855 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
857 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
858 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
859 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
864 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
865 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
866 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
867 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
869 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
870 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
871 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
872 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
873 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
874 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
875 of "make check" fail.
877 ** Remove deprecated options
879 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
880 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
881 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
882 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
883 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
885 ** Improved robustness
887 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
888 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
889 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
890 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
891 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
892 loss of the contents of a/f.
894 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
895 in its 35-colon command-line argument
899 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
900 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
901 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
903 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
904 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
905 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
906 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
908 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
909 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
910 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
911 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
912 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
913 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
914 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
915 destination is a symlink.
917 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
919 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
920 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
922 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
923 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
925 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
927 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
928 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
930 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
931 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
933 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
936 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
937 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
939 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
940 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
942 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
943 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
944 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
945 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
947 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
948 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
949 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
951 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
952 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
953 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
955 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
956 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
957 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
958 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
960 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
961 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
962 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
964 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
965 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
967 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
968 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
970 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
972 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
973 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
974 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
976 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
977 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
979 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
980 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
982 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
983 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
985 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
986 [present in the original version]
989 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
993 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
995 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
996 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
997 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
999 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1000 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1002 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1006 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1007 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1009 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1010 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1012 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1013 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1015 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1016 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1017 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1018 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1019 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1020 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1022 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1023 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1026 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1027 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1029 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1032 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1033 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1034 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1036 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1037 directory is unreadable.
1039 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1040 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1041 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1043 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1044 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1045 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1046 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1047 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1050 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1051 Before it would print nothing.
1053 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1055 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1056 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1057 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1058 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1059 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1060 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1061 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1062 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1064 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1068 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1069 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1070 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1072 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1073 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1074 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1075 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1078 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1082 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1083 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1084 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1085 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1086 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1087 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1088 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1090 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1091 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1092 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1093 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1094 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1095 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1096 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1097 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1099 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1100 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1101 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1104 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1108 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1109 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1111 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1112 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1113 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1115 ** Improved robustness
1117 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1118 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1119 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1122 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1126 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1127 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1128 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1129 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1130 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1132 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1136 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1139 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1143 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1144 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1145 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1146 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1148 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1149 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1151 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1152 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1153 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1156 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1158 ** Improved robustness
1160 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1161 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1163 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1164 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1165 or NFS-mounted partition.
1167 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1168 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1172 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1173 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1174 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1175 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1176 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1177 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1179 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1180 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1182 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1183 or neglect to report file removal.
1185 For the "groups" command:
1187 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1188 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1190 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1192 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1194 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1198 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1199 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1202 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1204 ** Changes in behavior
1206 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1207 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1208 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1209 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1211 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1212 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1213 a final `./' or `../' component.
1215 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1216 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1217 this only for pipes.
1219 ** Infrastructure changes
1221 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1222 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1223 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1224 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1228 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1229 name is "." or "..".
1231 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1232 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1233 dirent.d_type support.
1235 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1236 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1238 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1239 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1240 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1241 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1244 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1246 ** Changes in behavior
1248 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1252 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1253 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1257 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1258 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1259 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1261 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1262 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1264 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1265 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1267 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1269 ** Improved robustness
1271 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1272 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1273 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1275 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1276 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1279 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1280 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1282 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1283 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1285 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1286 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1288 ** Changes in behavior
1290 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1291 where the two are distinct.
1293 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1294 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1295 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1296 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1297 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1298 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1299 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1300 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1301 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1302 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1303 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1304 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1305 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1306 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1307 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1308 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1309 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1311 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1312 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1313 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1315 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1316 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1317 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1318 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1321 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1322 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1326 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1327 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1328 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1329 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1331 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1332 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1333 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1335 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1336 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1337 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1338 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1339 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1342 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1343 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1345 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1346 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1347 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1348 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1350 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1351 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1352 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1354 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1355 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1356 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1357 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1359 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1360 and sticky) with the -m option.
1362 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1363 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1364 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1365 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1366 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1368 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1369 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1371 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1375 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1376 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1377 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1378 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1380 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1382 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1384 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1385 silently ignoring one of them.
1387 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1388 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1389 containing this change was 5.92.
1391 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1392 automatically newline terminated.
1394 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1395 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1396 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1397 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1400 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1401 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1402 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1405 ** Scheduled for removal
1407 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1408 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1410 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1411 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1412 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1413 command to unlink a directory.
1415 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1416 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1417 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1418 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1422 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1423 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1424 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1425 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1426 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1427 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1431 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1432 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1434 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1436 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1437 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1438 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1440 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1441 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1444 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1445 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1447 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1448 list directories before files.
1450 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1451 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1452 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1453 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1456 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1458 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1460 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1461 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1462 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1464 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1465 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1469 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1470 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1471 usually printing nothing.
1473 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1475 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1476 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1477 them with hard-linked directories.
1479 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1480 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1481 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1483 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1484 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1485 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1487 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1490 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1491 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1493 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1494 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1496 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1497 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1499 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1500 all command-line arguments.
1502 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1504 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1506 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1507 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1509 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1511 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1512 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1513 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1514 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1515 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1517 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1518 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1520 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1521 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1522 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1523 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1525 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1527 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1531 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1532 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1534 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1535 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1537 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1538 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1540 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1541 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1543 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1544 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1546 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1548 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1549 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1550 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1553 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1555 ** Build-related bug fixes
1557 installing .mo files would fail
1560 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1564 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1566 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1569 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1573 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1574 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1578 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1580 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1581 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1583 ** Deprecated options
1585 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1586 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1588 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1592 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1594 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1595 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1596 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1597 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1599 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1602 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1608 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1613 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1615 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1617 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1618 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1619 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1621 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1622 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1623 problematic usages. These include:
1625 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1626 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1627 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1628 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1629 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1630 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1631 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1632 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1633 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1635 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1636 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1638 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1639 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1640 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1641 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1643 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1644 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1645 between binary and text files.
1647 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1651 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1655 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1656 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1658 head tac tail tee tr
1659 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1661 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1662 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1664 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1665 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1666 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1668 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1670 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1672 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1673 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1674 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1678 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1680 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1681 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1683 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1684 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1685 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1689 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1690 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1694 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1695 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1696 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1700 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1701 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1705 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1707 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1709 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1713 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1714 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1715 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1717 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1718 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1719 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1720 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1721 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1723 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1727 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1728 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1729 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1731 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1733 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1734 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1735 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1736 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1738 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1740 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1741 rather than silently wrapping around.
1743 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1744 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1746 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1747 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1749 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1750 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1751 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1752 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1754 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1756 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1758 ** Improved robustness
1760 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1761 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1762 no matter how large the result.
1764 ** Improved portability
1766 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1767 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1769 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1771 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1772 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1773 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1775 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1776 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1780 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1781 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1783 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1785 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1786 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1787 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1788 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1790 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1791 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1793 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1794 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1795 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1797 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1799 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1800 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1802 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1803 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1805 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1807 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1808 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1810 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1811 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1813 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1814 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1815 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1817 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1819 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1821 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1825 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1827 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1828 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1829 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1831 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1832 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1834 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1835 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1836 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1838 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1839 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1841 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1842 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1843 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1844 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1846 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1847 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1849 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1850 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1851 the file system does not support it.
1853 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1855 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1856 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1858 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1860 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1861 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1863 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1864 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1865 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1866 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1868 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1869 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1872 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1873 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1874 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1875 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1877 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1878 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1879 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1880 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1882 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1883 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1885 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1887 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1888 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1889 reporting incorrect results.
1893 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1894 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1896 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1899 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1901 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1902 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1904 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1905 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1907 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1910 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1911 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1912 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1913 the file name does not look like a page range.
1915 printf has several changes:
1917 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1918 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1920 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1921 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1922 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1924 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1925 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1928 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1929 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1931 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1932 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1934 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1936 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1937 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1939 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1941 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1943 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1944 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1945 when first encountering the directory.
1949 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1950 output; POSIX requires this.
1952 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1953 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1955 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1957 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1958 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1960 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1961 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1963 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1964 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1965 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1966 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1967 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1968 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1969 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1971 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1972 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1973 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1975 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1976 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1978 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1980 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1982 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1983 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1984 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1985 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1987 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1991 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1992 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1993 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1994 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1995 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1997 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1998 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1999 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2001 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2002 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2004 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2005 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2007 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2008 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2009 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2010 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2011 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2013 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2014 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2016 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2017 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2019 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2021 nocreat do not create the output file
2022 excl fail if the output file already exists
2023 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2024 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2026 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2028 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2029 direct use direct I/O for data
2030 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2031 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2032 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2033 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2034 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2036 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2038 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2039 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2042 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2043 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2044 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2045 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2046 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2047 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2049 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2050 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2052 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2055 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2057 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2059 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2060 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2062 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2063 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2064 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2066 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2067 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2068 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2070 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2072 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2073 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2075 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2076 for compatibility with bash.
2078 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2080 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2081 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2082 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2083 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2085 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2086 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2088 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2089 ls supports TABSIZE.
2090 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2091 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2092 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2094 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2097 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2099 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2100 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2101 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2102 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2103 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2104 an offset, not as a file name.
2106 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2107 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2109 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2110 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2112 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2113 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2115 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2116 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2117 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2119 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2120 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2122 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2123 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2127 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2129 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2131 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2135 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2136 or more arguments between partitions.
2138 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2139 holes in the destination.
2141 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2142 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2143 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2144 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2145 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2146 terminates immediately.
2148 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2150 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2152 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2153 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2154 not the empty string.
2156 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2157 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2161 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2162 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2163 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2166 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2173 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2177 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2178 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2180 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2181 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2183 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2184 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2185 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2188 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2192 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2193 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2195 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2196 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2198 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2199 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2200 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2202 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2204 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2207 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2209 ** Configuration option
2211 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2212 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2216 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2217 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2221 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2222 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2223 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2226 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2227 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2228 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2229 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2230 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2231 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2232 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2235 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2239 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2240 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2241 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2243 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2244 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2246 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2248 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2249 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2250 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2251 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2253 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2255 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2256 not just the ones that reference directories
2258 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2259 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2261 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2262 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2263 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2265 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2266 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2267 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2268 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2269 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2270 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2272 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2277 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2278 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2280 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2282 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2284 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2286 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2287 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2289 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2290 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2292 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2294 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2298 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2300 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2302 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2303 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2304 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2305 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2306 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2308 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2309 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2311 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2312 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2314 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2315 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2317 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2318 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2319 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2323 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2324 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2325 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2326 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2327 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2328 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2329 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2330 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2331 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2332 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2333 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2334 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2335 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2336 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2338 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2340 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2341 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2343 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2345 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2347 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2348 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2350 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2352 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2353 without a trailing newline.
2355 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2356 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2358 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2361 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2365 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2367 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2369 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2370 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2371 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2372 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2374 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2376 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2377 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2378 be printed without leading spaces.
2380 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2381 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2386 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2387 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2388 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2390 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2392 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2393 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2395 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2396 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2398 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2399 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2401 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2403 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2405 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2407 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2408 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2410 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2412 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2414 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2415 byte offsets are specified.
2418 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2421 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2424 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2425 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2426 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2427 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2428 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2429 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2430 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2431 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2432 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2433 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2434 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2435 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2436 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2437 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2438 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2439 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2440 directory where M has write access.
2441 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2442 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2443 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2446 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2447 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2448 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2449 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2450 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2451 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2452 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2453 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2454 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2455 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2456 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2457 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2458 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2459 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2460 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2461 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2462 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2463 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2464 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2465 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2466 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2467 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2468 appeared one additional time.
2470 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2471 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2472 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2473 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2476 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2477 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2478 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2479 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2480 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2481 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2482 if there were more than 338.
2484 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2485 - false --help now exits nonzero
2488 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2489 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2490 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2491 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2494 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2495 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2496 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2497 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2498 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2501 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2502 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2503 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2504 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2505 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2506 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2507 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2510 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2511 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2512 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2513 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2514 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2515 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2517 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2518 under certain unusual conditions
2519 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2520 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2523 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2524 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2525 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2526 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2527 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2528 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2529 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2530 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2531 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2532 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2533 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2534 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2535 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2536 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2537 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2538 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2541 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2542 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2545 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2546 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2547 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2548 involving hard-linked directories
2549 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2550 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2551 character-special and block files
2554 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2555 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2556 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2557 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2558 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2559 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2560 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2561 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2562 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2564 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2565 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2566 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2567 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2568 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2569 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2570 specified on the command line.
2571 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2572 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2573 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2574 the first file untouched.
2575 * readlink: new program
2576 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2577 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2578 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2579 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2580 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2581 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2584 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2585 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2586 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2587 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2588 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2589 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2590 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2591 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2592 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2593 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2594 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2595 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2597 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2598 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2599 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2601 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2602 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2603 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2604 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2605 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2606 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2607 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2608 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2611 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2612 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2615 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2616 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2617 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2618 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2619 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2620 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2621 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2624 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2625 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2627 ========================================================================
2628 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2629 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2632 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2634 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2635 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2636 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2637 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2638 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2639 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2640 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2641 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2642 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2643 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2644 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2645 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2647 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2648 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2649 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2650 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2652 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2655 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2657 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2658 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2659 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2660 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2661 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2662 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2663 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2666 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2667 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2668 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2669 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2670 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2671 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2672 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2673 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2674 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2675 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2676 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2677 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2678 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2679 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2680 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2681 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2683 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2684 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2686 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2687 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2688 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2689 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2690 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2691 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2693 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2694 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2695 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2696 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2697 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2698 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2699 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2701 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2702 the source files in the following example:
2703 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2704 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2705 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2706 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2707 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2708 links between source files with --preserve=links
2709 * cp accepts new options:
2710 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2711 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2712 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2713 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2714 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2715 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2716 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2717 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2718 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2720 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2721 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2722 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2723 even though it's older than dest.
2724 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2725 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2726 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2727 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2728 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2730 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2731 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2732 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2733 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2734 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2735 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2736 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2738 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2739 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2740 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2742 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2743 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2744 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2745 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2746 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2747 This is the default.
2749 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2750 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2751 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2752 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2753 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2755 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2758 ========================================================================
2759 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2760 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2763 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2764 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2766 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2767 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2768 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2769 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2770 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2772 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2773 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2774 that specifies a non-directory
2777 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2778 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2779 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2780 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2781 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2782 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2783 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2784 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2785 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2786 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2787 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2788 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2789 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2790 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2791 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2792 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2793 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2794 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2795 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2796 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2797 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2798 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2799 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2800 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2802 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2803 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2804 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2806 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2808 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2809 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2811 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2812 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2813 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2814 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2815 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2817 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2818 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2819 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2820 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2821 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2823 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2825 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2826 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2827 * still more portability fixes
2828 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2829 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2831 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2833 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2835 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2837 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2838 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2839 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2840 there is any time remaining
2841 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2843 ========================================================================
2844 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2845 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2847 This package began as the union of the following:
2848 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2850 ========================================================================
2852 Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2854 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2855 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2856 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2857 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2858 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2859 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.