1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 chown and chgrp with the -v --from= options, now output the correct owner.
8 I.E. for skipped files, the original ownership is output, not the new one.
9 [bug introduced in sh-utils-2.0g]
11 printf '%d' '"' no longer accesses out-of-bounds memory in the diagnostic.
12 [bug introduced in sh-utils-1.16]
14 split --number l/... no longer creates extraneous files in certain cases.
15 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
17 ** Changes in behavior
19 chmod, chown and chgrp now output the original attributes in messages,
20 when -v or -c specified.
24 split accepts a new --filter=CMD option. With it, split filters output
25 through CMD. CMD may use the $FILE environment variable, which is set to
26 the nominal output file name for each invocation of CMD. For example, to
27 split a file into 3 approximately equal parts, which are then compressed:
28 split -n3 --filter='xz > $FILE.xz' big
29 Note the use of single quotes, not double quotes.
30 That creates files named xaa.xz, xab.xz and xac.xz.
34 shuf outputs small subsets of large permutations much more efficiently.
35 For example `shuf -i1-$((2**32-1)) -n2` no longer exhausts memory.
37 cp and ls now support HP-UX 11.11's ACLs, thanks to improved support
42 Changes inherited from gnulib address a build failure on HP-UX 11.11
43 when using /opt/ansic/bin/cc.
46 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.12 (2011-04-26) [stable]
50 tail's --follow=name option no longer implies --retry on systems
51 with inotify support. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
53 ** Changes in behavior
55 cp's extent-based (FIEMAP) copying code is more reliable in the face
56 of varying and undocumented file system semantics:
57 - it no longer treats unwritten extents specially
58 - a FIEMAP-based extent copy always uses the FIEMAP_FLAG_SYNC flag.
59 Before, it would incur the performance penalty of that sync only
60 for 2.6.38 and older kernels. We thought all problems would be
62 - it now attempts a FIEMAP copy only on a file that appears sparse.
63 Sparse files are relatively unusual, and the copying code incurs
64 the performance penalty of the now-mandatory sync only for them.
68 dd once again compiles on AIX 5.1 and 5.2
71 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.11 (2011-04-13) [stable]
75 cp -a --link would not create a hardlink to a symlink, instead
76 copying the symlink and then not preserving its timestamp.
77 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
79 cp now avoids FIEMAP issues with BTRFS before Linux 2.6.38,
80 which could result in corrupt copies of sparse files.
81 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
83 cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
84 delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
85 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
87 du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR
88 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
90 sort no longer spawns 7 worker threads to sort 16 lines
91 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
93 touch built on Solaris 9 would segfault when run on Solaris 10
94 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
96 wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
97 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
101 dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options,
102 which will discard any cache associated with the files, or
103 processed portion thereof.
105 dd now warns that 'iflag=fullblock' should be used,
106 in various cases where partial reads can cause issues.
108 ** Changes in behavior
110 cp now avoids syncing files when possible, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
111 The sync is only needed on Linux kernels before 2.6.39.
112 [The sync was introduced in coreutils-8.10]
114 cp now copies empty extents efficiently, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
115 It no longer reads the zero bytes from the input, and also can efficiently
116 create a hole in the output file when --sparse=always is specified.
118 df now aligns columns consistently, and no longer wraps entries
119 with longer device identifiers, over two lines.
121 install now rejects its long-deprecated --preserve_context option.
122 Use --preserve-context instead.
124 test now accepts "==" as a synonym for "="
127 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
131 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
132 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
133 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
134 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
135 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
137 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
138 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
140 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
141 reject file names invalid for that file system.
143 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
144 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
148 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
149 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
150 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
151 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
152 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
153 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
154 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
155 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
157 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
158 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
159 the same number of fields are output for each line.
161 ** Changes in behavior
163 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
164 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
165 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
168 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
172 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
173 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
174 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
177 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
181 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
182 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
184 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
185 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
187 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
188 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
190 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
191 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
192 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
193 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
195 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
196 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
198 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
199 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
200 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
202 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
204 ** Changes in behavior
206 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
207 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
208 to the number of available processors.
212 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
215 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
219 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
220 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
221 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
222 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
224 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
225 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
226 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
228 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
229 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
231 ** Changes in behavior
233 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
234 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
236 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
237 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
238 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
239 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
240 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
241 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
243 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
244 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
245 the same way as the others.
248 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
252 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
253 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
254 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
256 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
257 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
259 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
260 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
261 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
263 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
264 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
266 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
267 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
269 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
270 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
271 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
273 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
274 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
275 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
276 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
280 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
281 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
283 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
286 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
287 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
289 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
291 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
292 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
293 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
295 ** Changes in behavior
297 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
298 rather than its aliased target.
300 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
301 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
302 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
304 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
305 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
306 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
307 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
308 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
309 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
310 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
311 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
313 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
315 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
317 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
318 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
321 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
322 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
323 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
324 control like taskset for example.
326 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
328 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
329 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
330 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
331 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
332 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
333 includes %C when context information is available.
335 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
336 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
337 rather than a file system attribute.
339 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
340 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
341 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
342 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
344 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
345 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
346 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
348 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
349 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
350 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
353 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
357 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
358 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
360 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
362 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
363 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
365 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
366 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
367 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
368 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
370 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
371 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
372 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
376 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
377 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
379 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
380 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
381 duration after the initial signal was sent.
383 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
384 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
385 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
386 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
387 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
388 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
389 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
390 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
391 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
393 ** Changes in behavior
395 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
396 sequence when it would be a no-op.
398 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
399 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
402 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
406 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
407 of available processors, which may not have been the case
408 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
409 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
413 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
414 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
416 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
417 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
418 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
419 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
421 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
422 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
423 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
426 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
430 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
431 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
432 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
434 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
435 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
436 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
438 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
439 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
441 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
442 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
443 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
444 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
446 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
447 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
448 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
450 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
451 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
452 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
453 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
455 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
456 renamed-aside and then recreated.
457 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
459 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
460 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
461 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
462 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
464 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
465 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
466 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
468 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
469 processes will not intersperse their output.
470 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
473 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
477 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
478 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
480 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
481 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
483 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
484 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
485 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
486 the presence of the empty string argument.
487 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
489 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
490 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
491 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
492 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
494 tail without -f no longer accesses uninitialized memory
495 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
497 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
498 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
499 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
501 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
502 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
503 and with a malicious user on the same system
504 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
505 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
508 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
512 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
513 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
514 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
516 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
517 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
518 offending directory and all "contents."
520 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
521 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
522 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
524 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
525 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
526 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
528 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
529 processes will not intersperse their output.
530 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
531 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
533 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
534 output the name of the file to stdout.
535 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
537 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
538 call fails with errno == EACCES.
539 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
541 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
542 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
545 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
546 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
547 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
549 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
550 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
551 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
552 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
553 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
554 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
556 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
557 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
558 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
559 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
561 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
562 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
564 ** Changes in behavior
566 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
567 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
568 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
569 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
570 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
572 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
573 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
574 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
575 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
577 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
579 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
580 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
581 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
582 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
583 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
587 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
591 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
592 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
594 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
595 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
597 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
598 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
599 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
601 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
602 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
605 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
609 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
610 when the source file doesn't have write access.
611 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
613 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
614 to accommodate leap seconds.
615 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
617 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
618 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
619 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
621 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
623 "ls -is" is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
624 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
625 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
627 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
628 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
629 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
630 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
631 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
635 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
636 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
637 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
638 directory or a symlink to a directory.
640 ** Changes in behavior
642 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
643 environment variable is set.
645 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
646 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
647 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
651 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
652 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
653 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
654 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
656 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
657 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
658 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
659 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
663 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
664 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
665 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
667 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
668 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
669 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
670 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
671 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
672 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
675 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
676 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
679 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
683 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
684 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
685 and libraries tested at configure time.
686 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
688 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
689 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
691 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
692 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
694 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
695 printing a summary to stderr.
696 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
698 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
699 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
700 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
702 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
703 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
705 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
706 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
707 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
708 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
710 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
711 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
712 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
713 which is relatively unusual.
714 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
716 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
717 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
718 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
719 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
720 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
721 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
722 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
726 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
727 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
728 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
729 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
730 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
734 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
735 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
737 ** Changes in behavior
739 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
740 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
741 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
742 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
743 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
746 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
750 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
751 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
753 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
754 before data copying has started.
756 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
757 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
759 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
760 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
761 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
762 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
764 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
765 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
766 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
767 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
769 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
774 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
775 for its standard streams.
777 ** Changes in behavior
779 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
780 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
781 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
782 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
783 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
784 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
786 ** Deprecated options
788 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
789 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
793 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
795 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
796 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
799 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
801 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
802 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
804 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
805 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
808 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
812 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
813 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
814 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
815 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
817 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
818 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
819 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
820 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
821 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
826 make check: two tests have been corrected
830 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
831 inherited from gnulib.
834 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
838 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
839 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
840 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
841 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
843 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
844 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
846 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
848 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
849 systems without xattr support.
851 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
852 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
853 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
855 ** Changes in behavior
857 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
858 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
859 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
860 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
862 ** Improved robustness
864 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
865 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
866 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
867 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
868 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
869 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
870 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
871 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
872 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
876 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
877 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
879 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
880 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
881 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
882 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
883 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
886 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
890 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
891 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
892 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
896 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
897 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
898 data was read, or on process exit.
899 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
901 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
902 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
903 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
904 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
906 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
907 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
908 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
909 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
911 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
912 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
914 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
915 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
917 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
918 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
919 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
921 ** Changes in behavior
923 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
924 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
925 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
927 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
928 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
930 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
931 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
932 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
935 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
939 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
941 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
942 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
943 install: Never copies xattrs
945 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
946 from overwriting any existing destination file
948 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
949 mode where this feature is available.
951 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
952 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
953 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
954 do not modify the destination at all.
956 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
958 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
962 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
963 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
965 cp uses much less memory in some situations
967 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
968 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
970 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
971 processing the first file name
973 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
974 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
975 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
976 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
978 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
979 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
981 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
982 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
985 ** Changes in behavior
987 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
988 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
990 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
991 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
992 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
994 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
995 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
997 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
999 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
1000 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
1001 is still marked with a '+'.
1004 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
1008 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
1009 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
1013 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
1014 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
1015 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
1016 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
1017 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
1018 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
1020 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1021 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1023 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
1024 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
1026 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
1028 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
1029 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
1030 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
1032 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
1033 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
1035 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
1036 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
1037 used to factor large numbers.
1039 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
1042 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
1044 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
1046 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
1047 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
1049 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
1050 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
1051 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
1052 maximum command-line (argv) length.
1054 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
1055 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
1056 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
1058 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
1059 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
1063 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
1065 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
1066 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
1068 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
1069 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
1071 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
1073 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
1074 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
1078 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
1079 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
1080 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
1082 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
1084 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
1085 no matter how many files are in a given directory
1087 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
1088 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
1089 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
1091 ** Changes in behavior
1093 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
1094 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
1097 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
1101 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
1103 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
1104 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
1105 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
1107 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
1108 with no USERNAME argument.
1110 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
1111 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
1112 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
1114 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
1115 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
1116 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
1117 number of fields for some inputs.
1119 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
1120 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1122 ** Changes in behavior
1124 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1125 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1128 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1132 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1134 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1135 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1136 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1137 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1139 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1140 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1142 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1143 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1145 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1146 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1148 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1149 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1150 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1151 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1153 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1154 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1155 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1156 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1157 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1158 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1160 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1161 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1163 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1164 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1165 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1167 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1168 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1170 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1171 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1173 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1174 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1175 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1176 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1178 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1179 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1181 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1182 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1184 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1185 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1186 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1190 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1191 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1193 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1194 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1195 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1196 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1200 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1201 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1203 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1205 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1209 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1210 which have negative errno values.
1214 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1218 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1222 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1223 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1226 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1230 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1231 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1232 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1234 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1235 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1236 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1237 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1241 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1242 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1243 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1244 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1247 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1251 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1253 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1254 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1255 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1258 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1262 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1263 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1265 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1267 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1269 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1271 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1275 ** Changes in behavior
1277 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1278 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1280 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1281 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1283 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1284 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1285 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1289 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1290 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1291 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1292 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1293 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1294 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1295 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1296 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1297 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1298 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1299 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1301 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1302 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1303 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1306 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1309 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1310 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1311 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1313 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1314 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1315 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1318 ** New build options
1320 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1321 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1322 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1323 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1325 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1326 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1327 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1328 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1329 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1330 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1331 of "make check" fail.
1333 ** Remove deprecated options
1335 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1336 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1337 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1338 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1339 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1341 ** Improved robustness
1343 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1344 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1345 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1346 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1347 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1348 loss of the contents of a/f.
1350 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1351 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1355 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1356 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1357 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1359 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1360 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1361 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1362 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1364 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1365 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1366 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1367 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1368 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1369 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1370 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1371 destination is a symlink.
1373 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1375 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1376 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1378 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1379 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1381 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1383 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1384 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1386 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1387 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1389 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1392 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1393 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1395 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1396 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1398 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1399 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1400 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1401 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1403 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1404 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1405 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1407 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1408 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1409 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1411 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1412 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1413 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1414 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1416 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1417 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1418 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1420 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1421 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1423 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1424 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1426 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1428 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1429 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1430 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1432 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1433 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1435 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1436 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1438 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1439 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1441 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1442 [present in the original version]
1445 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1449 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1451 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1452 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1453 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1455 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1456 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1458 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1462 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1463 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1465 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1466 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1468 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1469 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1471 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1472 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1473 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1474 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1475 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1476 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1478 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1479 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1482 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1483 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1485 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1488 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1489 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1490 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1492 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1493 directory is unreadable.
1495 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1496 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1497 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1499 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1500 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1501 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1502 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1503 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1506 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1507 Before it would print nothing.
1509 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1511 "rm -rf D" would emit a misleading diagnostic when failing to
1512 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1513 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1514 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1515 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1516 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1517 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1518 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1520 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1524 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1525 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1526 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1528 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1529 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1530 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1531 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1534 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1538 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1539 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1540 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1541 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1542 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1543 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1544 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1546 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1547 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1548 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1549 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1550 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1551 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1552 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1553 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1555 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1556 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1557 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1560 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1564 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1565 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1567 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1568 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1569 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1571 ** Improved robustness
1573 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1574 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1575 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1578 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1582 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1583 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1584 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1585 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1586 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1588 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1592 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1595 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1599 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1600 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1601 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1602 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1604 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1605 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1607 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1608 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1609 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1612 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1614 ** Improved robustness
1616 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1617 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1619 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1620 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1621 or NFS-mounted partition.
1623 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1624 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1628 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1629 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1630 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1631 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1632 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1633 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1635 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1636 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1638 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1639 or neglect to report file removal.
1641 For the "groups" command:
1643 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1644 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1646 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1648 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1650 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1654 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1655 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1658 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1660 ** Changes in behavior
1662 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1663 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1664 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1665 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1667 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1668 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1669 a final `./' or `../' component.
1671 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1672 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1673 this only for pipes.
1675 ** Infrastructure changes
1677 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1678 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1679 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1680 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1684 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1685 name is "." or "..".
1687 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1688 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1689 dirent.d_type support.
1691 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1692 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1694 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1695 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1696 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1697 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1700 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1702 ** Changes in behavior
1704 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1708 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1709 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1713 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1714 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1715 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1717 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1718 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1720 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1721 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1723 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1725 ** Improved robustness
1727 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1728 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1729 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1731 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1732 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1735 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1736 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1738 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1739 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1741 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1742 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1744 ** Changes in behavior
1746 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1747 where the two are distinct.
1749 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1750 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1751 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1752 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1753 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1754 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1755 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1756 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1757 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1758 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1759 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1760 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1761 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1762 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1763 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1764 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1765 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1767 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1768 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1769 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1771 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1772 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1773 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1774 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1777 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1778 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1782 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1783 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1784 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1785 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1787 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1788 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1789 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1791 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1792 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1793 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1794 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1795 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1798 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1799 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1801 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1802 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1803 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1804 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1806 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1807 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1808 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1810 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1811 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1812 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1813 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1815 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1816 and sticky) with the -m option.
1818 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1819 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1820 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1821 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1822 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1824 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1825 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1827 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1831 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1832 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1833 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1834 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1836 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1838 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1840 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1841 silently ignoring one of them.
1843 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1844 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1845 containing this change was 5.92.
1847 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1848 automatically newline terminated.
1850 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1851 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1852 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1853 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1856 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1857 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1858 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1861 ** Scheduled for removal
1863 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1864 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1866 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1867 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1868 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1869 command to unlink a directory.
1871 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1872 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1873 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1874 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1878 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1879 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1880 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1881 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1882 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1883 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1887 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1888 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1890 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1892 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1893 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1894 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1896 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1897 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1900 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1901 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1903 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1904 list directories before files.
1906 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1907 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1908 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1909 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1912 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1914 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1916 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1917 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1918 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1920 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1921 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1925 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1926 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1927 usually printing nothing.
1929 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1931 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1932 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1933 them with hard-linked directories.
1935 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1936 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1937 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1939 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1940 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1941 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1943 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1946 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1947 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1949 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1950 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1952 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1953 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1955 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1956 all command-line arguments.
1958 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1960 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1962 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1963 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1965 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1967 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1968 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1969 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1970 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1971 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1973 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1974 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1976 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1977 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1978 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1979 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1981 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1983 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1987 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1988 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1990 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1991 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1993 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1994 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1996 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1997 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1999 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
2000 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
2002 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
2004 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
2005 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
2006 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
2009 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
2011 ** Build-related bug fixes
2013 installing .mo files would fail
2016 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
2020 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
2022 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
2025 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
2029 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
2030 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
2034 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
2036 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
2037 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
2039 ** Deprecated options
2041 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
2042 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
2044 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
2048 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
2050 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
2051 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
2052 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
2053 conforming to older POSIX versions.
2055 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
2058 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
2064 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
2069 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
2071 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
2073 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
2074 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
2075 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
2077 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
2078 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
2079 problematic usages. These include:
2081 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
2082 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
2083 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
2084 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
2085 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
2086 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
2087 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
2088 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
2089 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
2091 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
2092 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
2094 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
2095 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
2096 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
2097 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
2099 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
2100 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
2101 between binary and text files.
2103 The following programs now always use text input/output:
2107 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
2111 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
2112 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
2114 head tac tail tee tr
2115 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
2117 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
2118 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
2120 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2121 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2122 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2124 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2126 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2128 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2129 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2130 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2134 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2136 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2137 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2139 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2140 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2141 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2145 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2146 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2150 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2151 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2152 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2156 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2157 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2161 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2163 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2165 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2169 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2170 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2171 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2173 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2174 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2175 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2176 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2177 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2179 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2183 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2184 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2185 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2187 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2189 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2190 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2191 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2192 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2194 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2196 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2197 rather than silently wrapping around.
2199 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2200 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2202 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2203 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2205 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2206 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2207 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2208 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2210 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2212 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2214 ** Improved robustness
2216 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2217 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2218 no matter how large the result.
2220 ** Improved portability
2222 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2223 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2225 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2227 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2228 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2229 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2231 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2232 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2236 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2237 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2239 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2241 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2242 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2243 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2244 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2246 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2247 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2249 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2250 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2251 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2253 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2255 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2256 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2258 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2259 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2261 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2263 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2264 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2266 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2267 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2269 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2270 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2271 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2273 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2275 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2277 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2281 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2283 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2284 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2285 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2287 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2288 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2290 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2291 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2292 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2294 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2295 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2297 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2298 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2299 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2300 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2302 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2303 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2305 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2306 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2307 the file system does not support it.
2309 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2311 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2312 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2314 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2316 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2317 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2319 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2320 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2321 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2322 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2324 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2325 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2328 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2329 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2330 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2331 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2333 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2334 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2335 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2336 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2338 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2339 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2341 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2343 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2344 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2345 reporting incorrect results.
2349 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2350 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2352 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2355 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2357 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2358 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2360 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2361 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2363 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2366 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2367 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2368 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2369 the file name does not look like a page range.
2371 printf has several changes:
2373 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2374 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2376 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2377 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2378 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2380 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2381 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2384 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2385 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2387 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2388 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2390 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2392 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2393 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2395 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2397 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2399 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2400 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2401 when first encountering the directory.
2405 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2406 output; POSIX requires this.
2408 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2409 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2411 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2413 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2414 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2416 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2417 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2419 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2420 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2421 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2422 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2423 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2424 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2425 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2427 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2428 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2429 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2431 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2432 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2434 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2436 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2438 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2439 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2440 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2441 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2443 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2447 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2448 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2449 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2450 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2451 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2453 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2454 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2455 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2457 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2458 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2460 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2461 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2463 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2464 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2465 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2466 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2467 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2469 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2470 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2472 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2473 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2475 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2477 nocreat do not create the output file
2478 excl fail if the output file already exists
2479 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2480 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2482 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2484 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2485 direct use direct I/O for data
2486 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2487 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2488 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2489 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2490 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2492 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2494 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2495 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2498 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2499 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2500 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2501 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2502 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2503 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2505 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2506 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2508 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2511 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2513 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2515 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2516 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2518 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2519 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2520 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2522 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2523 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2524 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2526 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2528 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2529 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2531 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2532 for compatibility with bash.
2534 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2536 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2537 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2538 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2539 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2541 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2542 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2544 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2545 ls supports TABSIZE.
2546 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2547 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2548 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2550 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2553 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2555 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2556 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2557 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2558 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2559 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2560 an offset, not as a file name.
2562 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2563 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2565 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2566 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2568 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2569 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2571 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2572 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2573 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2575 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2576 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2578 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2579 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2583 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2585 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2587 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2591 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2592 or more arguments between partitions.
2594 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2595 holes in the destination.
2597 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2598 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2599 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2600 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2601 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2602 terminates immediately.
2604 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2606 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2608 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2609 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2610 not the empty string.
2612 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2613 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2617 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2618 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2619 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2622 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2629 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2633 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2634 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2636 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2637 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2639 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2640 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2641 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2644 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2648 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2649 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2651 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2652 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2654 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2655 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2656 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2658 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2660 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2663 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2665 ** Configuration option
2667 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2668 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2672 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2673 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2677 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2678 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2679 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2682 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2683 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2684 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2685 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2686 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2687 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2688 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2691 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2695 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2696 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2697 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2699 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2700 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2702 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2704 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2705 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2706 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2707 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2709 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2711 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2712 not just the ones that reference directories
2714 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2715 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2717 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2718 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2719 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2721 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2722 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2723 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2724 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2725 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2726 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2728 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2733 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2734 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2736 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2738 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2740 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2742 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2743 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2745 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2746 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2748 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2750 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2754 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2756 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2758 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2759 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2760 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2761 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2762 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2764 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2765 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2767 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2768 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2770 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2771 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2773 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2774 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2775 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2779 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2780 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2781 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2782 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2783 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2784 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2785 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2786 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2787 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2788 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2789 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2790 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2791 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2792 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2794 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2796 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2797 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2799 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2801 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2803 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2804 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2806 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2808 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2809 without a trailing newline.
2811 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2812 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2814 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2817 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2821 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2823 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2825 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2826 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2827 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2828 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2830 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2832 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2833 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2834 be printed without leading spaces.
2836 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2837 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2842 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2843 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2844 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2846 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2848 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2849 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2851 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2852 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2854 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2855 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2857 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2859 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2861 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2863 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2864 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2866 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2868 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2870 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2871 byte offsets are specified.
2874 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2877 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2880 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2881 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2882 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2883 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2884 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2885 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2886 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2887 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2888 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2889 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2890 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2891 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2892 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2893 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2894 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2895 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2896 directory where M has write access.
2897 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2898 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2899 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2902 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2903 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2904 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2905 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2906 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2907 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2908 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2909 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2910 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2911 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2912 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2913 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2914 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2915 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2916 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2917 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2918 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2919 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2920 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2921 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2922 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2923 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2924 appeared one additional time.
2926 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2927 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2928 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2929 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2932 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2933 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2934 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2935 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2936 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2937 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2938 if there were more than 338.
2940 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2941 - false --help now exits nonzero
2944 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2945 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2946 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2947 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2950 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2951 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2952 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2953 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2954 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2957 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2958 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2959 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2960 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2961 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2962 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2963 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2966 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2967 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2968 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2969 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2970 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2971 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2973 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2974 under certain unusual conditions
2975 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2976 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2979 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2980 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2981 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2982 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2983 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2984 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2985 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2986 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2987 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2988 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2989 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2990 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2991 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2992 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2993 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2994 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2997 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2998 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
3001 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
3002 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
3003 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
3004 involving hard-linked directories
3005 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
3006 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
3007 character-special and block files
3010 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
3011 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
3012 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
3013 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
3014 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
3015 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
3016 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
3017 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
3018 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
3020 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
3021 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
3022 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
3023 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
3024 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
3025 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
3026 specified on the command line.
3027 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
3028 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
3029 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
3030 the first file untouched.
3031 * readlink: new program
3032 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
3033 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
3034 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
3035 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
3036 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
3037 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
3040 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
3041 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
3042 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
3043 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
3044 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
3045 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
3046 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
3047 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
3048 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
3049 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
3050 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
3051 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
3053 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
3054 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
3055 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
3057 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
3058 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
3059 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
3060 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
3061 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
3062 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
3063 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
3064 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
3067 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
3068 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
3071 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
3072 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
3073 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
3074 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
3075 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
3076 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
3077 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
3080 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
3081 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
3083 ========================================================================
3084 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
3085 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3088 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
3090 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3091 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
3092 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
3093 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
3094 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
3095 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
3096 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
3097 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
3098 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
3099 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
3100 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
3101 The old options will continue to work for a while.
3103 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
3104 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
3105 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
3106 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
3108 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
3111 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
3113 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
3114 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
3115 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
3116 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
3117 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
3118 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
3119 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3122 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3123 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3124 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3125 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3126 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
3127 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3128 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
3129 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3130 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3131 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3132 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
3133 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
3134 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3135 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3136 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3137 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3139 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3140 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3142 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3143 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3144 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3145 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3146 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3147 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3149 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3150 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3151 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3152 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3153 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3154 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3155 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3157 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3158 the source files in the following example:
3159 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3160 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3161 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3162 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3163 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3164 links between source files with --preserve=links
3165 * cp accepts new options:
3166 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3167 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3168 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3169 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3170 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3171 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3172 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3173 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
3174 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3176 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3177 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3178 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3179 even though it's older than dest.
3180 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3181 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3182 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3183 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3184 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3186 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3187 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3188 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3189 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3190 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3191 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3192 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3194 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3195 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3196 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3198 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3199 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3200 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3201 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3202 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3203 This is the default.
3205 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3206 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3207 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3208 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3209 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3211 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3214 ========================================================================
3215 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3216 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3219 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3220 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3222 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3223 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3224 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3225 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3226 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3228 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3229 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3230 that specifies a non-directory
3233 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3234 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3235 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3236 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3237 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3238 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3239 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3240 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3241 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3242 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3243 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3244 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3245 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3246 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3247 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3248 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3249 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3250 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3251 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3252 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3253 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3254 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3255 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3256 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3258 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3259 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3260 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3262 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3264 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3265 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3267 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3268 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3269 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3270 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3271 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3273 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3274 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3275 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3276 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3277 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3279 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3281 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3282 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3283 * still more portability fixes
3284 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3285 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3287 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3289 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3291 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3293 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3294 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3295 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3296 there is any time remaining
3297 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3299 ========================================================================
3300 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3301 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3303 This package began as the union of the following:
3304 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3306 ========================================================================
3308 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3310 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3311 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3312 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3313 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3314 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3315 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.