1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 numfmt: reformat numbers
11 df now accepts the --output[=FIELD_LIST] option to define the list of columns
12 to include in the output, or all available columns if the FIELD_LIST is
13 omitted. Note this enables df to output both block and inode fields together.
15 du now accepts the --threshold=SIZE option to restrict the output to entries
16 with such a minimum SIZE (or a maximum SIZE if it is negative).
17 du recognizes -t SIZE as equivalent, for compatibility with FreeBSD.
21 cp --no-preserve=mode now no longer exits non-zero.
22 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20]
24 cut with a range like "N-" no longer allocates N/8 bytes. That buffer
25 would never be used, and allocation failure could cause cut to fail.
26 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
28 cut no longer accepts the invalid range 0-, which made it print empty lines.
29 Instead, cut now fails and emits an appropriate diagnostic.
30 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
32 cut now handles overlapping to-EOL ranges properly. Before, it would
33 interpret "-b2-,3-" like "-b3-". Now it's treated like "-b2-".
34 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
36 cut no longer prints extraneous delimiters when a to-EOL range subsumes
37 another range. Before, "echo 123|cut --output-delim=: -b2-,3" would print
38 "2:3". Now it prints "23". [bug introduced in 5.3.0]
40 cut -f no longer inspects input line N+1 before fully outputting line N,
41 which avoids delayed output for intermittent input.
42 [bug introduced in TEXTUTILS-1_8b]
44 factor no longer loops infinitely on 32 bit powerpc or sparc systems.
45 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20]
47 install -m M SOURCE DEST no longer has a race condition where DEST's
48 permissions are temporarily derived from SOURCE instead of from M.
50 pr -n no longer crashes when passed values >= 32. Also, line numbers are
51 consistently padded with spaces, rather than with zeros for certain widths.
52 [bug introduced in TEXTUTILS-1_22i]
54 seq -w ensures that for numbers input in scientific notation,
55 the output numbers are properly aligned and of the correct width.
56 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
58 seq -w ensures correct alignment when the step value includes a precision
59 while the start value does not, and the number sequence narrows.
60 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
62 seq -s no longer prints an erroneous newline after the first number, and
63 outputs a newline after the last number rather than a trailing separator.
64 Also seq no longer ignores a specified step value when the end value is 1.
65 [bugs introduced in coreutils-8.20]
67 timeout now ensures that blocking of ALRM signals is not inherited from
68 its parent, which would cause timeouts to be ignored.
69 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
71 ** Changes in behavior
73 df --total now prints '-' into the target column (mount point) of the
74 summary line, accommodating the --output option where the target field
75 can be in any column. If there is no source column, then df prints
76 'total' in the target column.
78 df now properly outputs file system information with bind mounts present on
79 the system by skipping duplicate entries (identified by the device number).
80 Consequently, df also elides the early-boot pseudo file system type "rootfs".
82 nl no longer supports the --page-increment option, which has been
83 deprecated since coreutils-7.5. Use --line-increment instead.
87 readlink now supports multiple arguments, and a complementary
88 -z, --zero option to delimit output items with the NUL character.
90 stat and tail now know about CEPH. stat -f --format=%T now reports the file
91 system type, and tail -f uses polling for files on CEPH file systems.
96 Perl is now more of a prerequisite. It has long been required in order
97 to run (not skip) a significant percentage of the tests. Now, it is
98 also required in order to generate proper man pages, via help2man. The
99 generated man/*.1 man pages are no longer distributed. Building without
100 perl, you would create stub man pages. Thus, while perl is not an
101 official prerequisite (build and "make check" will still succeed), any
102 resulting man pages would be inferior. In addition, this fixes a bug
103 in distributed (not from clone) Makefile.in that could cause parallel
104 build failure when building from modified sources, as is common practice
105 for a patched distribution package.
107 factor now builds on x86_64 with x32 ABI, 32 bit MIPS, and all HPPA systems,
108 by avoiding incompatible asm. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20]
110 A root-only test predicate would always fail. Its job was to determine
111 whether our dummy user, $NON_ROOT_USERNAME, was able to run binaries from
112 the build directory. As a result, all dependent tests were always skipped.
113 Now, those tests may be run once again. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20]
116 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.20 (2012-10-23) [stable]
120 dd now accepts 'status=none' to suppress all informational output.
122 md5sum now accepts the --tag option to print BSD-style output with GNU
123 file name escaping. This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha256sum,
124 sha384sum and sha512sum.
128 cp could read from freed memory and could even make corrupt copies.
129 This could happen with a very fragmented and sparse input file,
130 on GNU/Linux file systems supporting fiemap extent scanning.
131 This bug also affects mv when it resorts to copying, and install.
132 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.11]
134 cp --no-preserve=mode now no longer preserves the original file's
135 permissions but correctly sets mode specified by 0666 & ~umask
137 du no longer emits a "disk-corrupted"-style diagnostic when it detects
138 a directory cycle that is due to a bind-mounted directory. Instead,
139 it detects this precise type of cycle, diagnoses it as such and
140 eventually exits nonzero.
142 factor (when using gmp) would mistakenly declare some composite numbers
143 to be prime, e.g., 465658903, 2242724851, 6635692801 and many more.
144 The fix makes factor somewhat slower (~25%) for ranges of consecutive
145 numbers, and up to 8 times slower for some worst-case individual numbers.
146 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0, with GNU MP support]
148 ls now correctly colors dangling symlinks when listing their containing
149 directories, with orphaned symlink coloring disabled in LS_COLORS.
150 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.14]
152 rm -i -d now prompts the user then removes an empty directory, rather
153 than ignoring the -d option and failing with an 'Is a directory' error.
154 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.19, with the addition of --dir (-d)]
156 rm -r S/ (where S is a symlink-to-directory) no longer gives the invalid
157 "Too many levels of symbolic links" diagnostic.
158 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
160 seq now handles arbitrarily long non-negative whole numbers when the
161 increment is 1 and when no format-changing option is specified.
162 Before, this would infloop:
163 b=100000000000000000000; seq $b $b
164 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
166 ** Changes in behavior
168 nproc now diagnoses with an error, non option command line parameters.
172 factor's core has been rewritten for speed and increased range.
173 It can now factor numbers up to 2^128, even without GMP support.
174 Its speed is from a few times better (for small numbers) to over
175 10,000 times better (just below 2^64). The new code also runs a
176 deterministic primality test for each prime factor, not just a
179 seq is now up to 70 times faster than it was in coreutils-8.19 and prior,
180 but only with non-negative whole numbers, an increment of 1, and no
181 format-changing options.
183 stat and tail know about ZFS, VZFS and VMHGFS. stat -f --format=%T now
184 reports the file system type, and tail -f now uses inotify for files on
185 ZFS and VZFS file systems, rather than the default (for unknown file
186 system types) of issuing a warning and reverting to polling. tail -f
187 still uses polling for files on VMHGFS file systems.
191 root-only tests now check for permissions of our dummy user,
192 $NON_ROOT_USERNAME, before trying to run binaries from the build directory.
193 Before, we would get hard-to-diagnose reports of failing root-only tests.
194 Now, those tests are skipped with a useful diagnostic when the root tests
195 are run without following the instructions in README.
197 We now build most directories using non-recursive make rules. I.e.,
198 rather than running make in man/, lib/, src/, tests/, instead, the top
199 level Makefile.am includes a $dir/local.mk that describes how to build
200 the targets in the corresponding directory. Two directories remain
201 unconverted: po/, gnulib-tests/. One nice side-effect is that the more
202 accurate dependencies have eliminated a nagging occasional failure that
203 was seen when running parallel "make syntax-check".
206 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.19 (2012-08-20) [stable]
210 df now fails when the list of mounted file systems (/etc/mtab) cannot
211 be read, yet the file system type information is needed to process
212 certain options like -a, -l, -t and -x.
213 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
215 sort -u could fail to output one or more result lines.
216 For example, this command would fail to print "1":
217 (yes 7 | head -11; echo 1) | sort --p=1 -S32b -u
218 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
220 sort -u could read freed memory.
221 For example, this evokes a read from freed memory:
222 perl -le 'print "a\n"."0"x900'|valgrind sort --p=1 -S32b -u>/dev/null
223 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
227 rm now accepts the --dir (-d) option which makes it remove empty directories.
228 Since removing empty directories is relatively safe, this option can be
229 used as a part of the alias rm='rm --dir'. This improves compatibility
230 with Mac OS X and BSD systems which also honor the -d option.
233 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.18 (2012-08-12) [stable]
237 cksum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
238 processes will not intersperse their output.
239 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
241 date -d "$(printf '\xb0')" would print 00:00:00 with today's date
242 rather than diagnosing the invalid input. Now it reports this:
243 date: invalid date '\260'
244 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
246 df no longer outputs control characters present in the mount point name.
247 Such characters are replaced with '?', so for example, scripts consuming
248 lines output by df, can work reliably.
249 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
251 df --total now exits with an appropriate diagnostic and error code, when
252 file system --type options do not lead to a processed file system.
253 [This bug dates back to when --total was added in coreutils-7.0]
255 head --lines=-N (-n-N) now resets the read pointer of a seekable input file.
256 This means that "head -n-3" no longer consumes all of its input, and lines
257 not output by head may be processed by other programs. For example, this
258 command now prints the final line, 2, while before it would print nothing:
259 seq 2 > k; (head -n-1 > /dev/null; cat) < k
260 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
262 ls --color would mis-color relative-named symlinks in /
263 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.17]
265 split now ensures it doesn't overwrite the input file with generated output.
266 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
268 stat and df now report the correct file system usage,
269 in all situations on GNU/Linux, by correctly determining the block size.
270 [df bug since coreutils-5.0.91, stat bug since the initial implementation]
272 tail -f no longer tries to use inotify on AUFS or PanFS file systems
273 [you might say this was introduced in coreutils-7.5, along with inotify
274 support, but even now, its magic number isn't in the usual place.]
278 stat -f recognizes the new remote file system types: aufs, panfs.
280 ** Changes in behavior
282 su: this program has been removed. We stopped installing "su" by
283 default with the release of coreutils-6.9.90 on 2007-12-01. Now,
284 that the util-linux package has the union of the Suse and Fedora
285 patches as well as enough support to build on the Hurd, we no longer
286 have any reason to include it here.
290 sort avoids redundant processing in the presence of inaccessible inputs,
291 or unwritable output. Sort now diagnoses certain errors at start-up,
292 rather than after potentially expensive processing.
294 sort now allocates no more than 75% of physical memory by default,
295 to better share system resources, and thus operate more efficiently.
296 [The default max memory usage changed from 50% to 100% in coreutils-8.16]
299 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.17 (2012-05-10) [stable]
303 id and groups, when invoked with no user name argument, would print
304 the default group ID listed in the password database, and sometimes
305 that ID would be neither real nor effective. For example, when run
306 set-GID, or in a session for which the default group has just been
307 changed, the new group ID would be listed, even though it is not
308 yet effective. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
310 cp S D is no longer subject to a race: if an existing D were removed
311 between the initial stat and subsequent open-without-O_CREATE, cp would
312 fail with a confusing diagnostic saying that the destination, D, was not
313 found. Now, in this unusual case, it retries the open (but with O_CREATE),
314 and hence usually succeeds. With NFS attribute caching, the condition
315 was particularly easy to trigger, since there, the removal of D could
316 precede the initial stat. [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
318 split --number=C /dev/null no longer appears to infloop on GNU/Hurd
319 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
321 stat no longer reports a negative file size as a huge positive number.
322 [bug present since 'stat' was introduced in fileutils-4.1.9]
326 split and truncate now allow any seekable files in situations where
327 the file size is needed, instead of insisting on regular files.
329 fmt now accepts the --goal=WIDTH (-g) option.
331 stat -f recognizes new file system types: bdevfs, inodefs, qnx6
333 ** Changes in behavior
335 cp,mv,install,cat,split: now read and write a minimum of 64KiB at a time.
336 This was previously 32KiB and increasing to 64KiB was seen to increase
337 throughput by about 10% when reading cached files on 64 bit GNU/Linux.
339 cp --attributes-only no longer truncates any existing destination file,
340 allowing for more general copying of attributes from one file to another.
343 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.16 (2012-03-26) [stable]
347 As a GNU extension, 'chmod', 'mkdir', and 'install' now accept operators
348 '-', '+', '=' followed by octal modes; for example, 'chmod +40 FOO' enables
349 and 'chmod -40 FOO' disables FOO's group-read permissions. Operator
350 numeric modes can be combined with symbolic modes by separating them with
351 commas; for example, =0,u+r clears all permissions except for enabling
352 user-read permissions. Unlike ordinary numeric modes, operator numeric
353 modes do not preserve directory setuid and setgid bits; for example,
354 'chmod =0 FOO' clears all of FOO's permissions, including setuid and setgid.
356 Also, ordinary numeric modes with five or more digits no longer preserve
357 setuid and setgid bits, so that 'chmod 00755 FOO' now clears FOO's setuid
358 and setgid bits. This allows scripts to be portable to other systems which
359 lack the GNU extension mentioned previously, and where ordinary numeric
360 modes do not preserve directory setuid and setgid bits.
362 dd now accepts the count_bytes, skip_bytes iflags and the seek_bytes
363 oflag, to more easily allow processing portions of a file.
365 dd now accepts the conv=sparse flag to attempt to create sparse
366 output, by seeking rather than writing to the output file.
368 ln now accepts the --relative option, to generate a relative
369 symbolic link to a target, irrespective of how the target is specified.
371 split now accepts an optional "from" argument to --numeric-suffixes,
372 which changes the start number from the default of 0.
374 split now accepts the --additional-suffix option, to append an
375 additional static suffix to output file names.
377 basename now supports the -a and -s options, which allow processing
378 of more than one argument at a time. Also the complementary
379 -z option was added to delimit output items with the NUL character.
381 dirname now supports more than one argument. Also the complementary
382 -z option was added to delimit output items with the NUL character.
386 du --one-file-system (-x) would ignore any non-directory specified on
387 the command line. For example, "touch f; du -x f" would print nothing.
388 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.15]
390 mv now lets you move a symlink onto a same-inode destination file that
391 has two or more hard links. Before, it would reject that, saying that
392 they are the same, implicitly warning you that the move would result in
393 data loss. In this unusual case, when not moving the symlink onto its
394 referent, there is no risk of data loss, since the symlink will
395 typically still point to one of the hard links.
397 "mv A B" could succeed, yet A would remain. This would happen only when
398 both A and B were hard links to the same symlink, and with a kernel for
399 which rename("A","B") does nothing and returns 0 (POSIX mandates this
400 surprising rename no-op behavior). Now, mv handles this case by skipping
401 the usually-useless rename and simply unlinking A.
403 realpath no longer mishandles a root directory. This was most
404 noticeable on platforms where // is a different directory than /,
405 but could also be observed with --relative-base=/ or
406 --relative-to=/. [bug since the beginning, in 8.15]
410 ls can be much more efficient, especially with large directories on file
411 systems for which getfilecon-, ACL-check- and XATTR-check-induced syscalls
412 fail with ENOTSUP or similar.
414 'realpath --relative-base=dir' in isolation now implies '--relative-to=dir'
415 instead of causing a usage failure.
417 split now supports an unlimited number of split files as default behavior.
420 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.15 (2012-01-06) [stable]
424 realpath: print resolved file names.
428 du -x no longer counts root directories of other file systems.
429 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
431 ls --color many-entry-directory was uninterruptible for too long
432 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.2.1]
434 ls's -k option no longer affects how ls -l outputs file sizes.
435 It now affects only the per-directory block counts written by -l,
436 and the sizes written by -s. This is for compatibility with BSD
437 and with POSIX 2008. Because -k is no longer equivalent to
438 --block-size=1KiB, a new long option --kibibyte stands for -k.
439 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.4]
441 ls -l would leak a little memory (security context string) for each
442 nonempty directory listed on the command line, when using SELinux.
443 [bug probably introduced in coreutils-6.10 with SELinux support]
445 rm -rf DIR would fail with "Device or resource busy" on Cygwin with NWFS
446 and NcFsd file systems. This did not affect Unix/Linux-based kernels.
447 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0, when rm began using fts]
449 split -n 1/2 FILE no longer fails when operating on a growing file, or
450 (on some systems) when operating on a non-regular file like /dev/zero.
451 It would report "/dev/zero: No such file or directory" even though
452 the file obviously exists. Same for -n l/2.
453 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8, with the addition of the -n option]
455 stat -f now recognizes the FhGFS and PipeFS file system types.
457 tac no longer fails to handle two or more non-seekable inputs
458 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
460 tail -f no longer tries to use inotify on GPFS or FhGFS file systems
461 [you might say this was introduced in coreutils-7.5, along with inotify
462 support, but the new magic numbers weren't in the usual places then.]
464 ** Changes in behavior
466 df avoids long UUID-including file system names in the default listing.
467 With recent enough kernel/tools, these long names would be used, pushing
468 second and subsequent columns far to the right. Now, when a long name
469 refers to a symlink, and no file systems are specified, df prints the
470 usually-short referent instead.
472 tail -f now uses polling (not inotify) when any of its file arguments
473 resides on a file system of unknown type. In addition, for each such
474 argument, tail -f prints a warning with the FS type magic number and a
475 request to report it to the bug-reporting address.
478 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.14 (2011-10-12) [stable]
482 ls --dereference no longer outputs erroneous "argetm" strings for
483 dangling symlinks when an 'ln=target' entry is in $LS_COLORS.
484 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
486 ls -lL symlink once again properly prints "+" when the referent has an ACL.
487 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.13]
489 sort -g no longer infloops for certain inputs containing NaNs
490 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
494 md5sum --check now supports the -r format from the corresponding BSD tool.
495 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
497 pwd now works also on systems without openat. On such systems, pwd
498 would fail when run from a directory whose absolute name contained
499 more than PATH_MAX / 3 components. The df, stat and readlink programs
500 are also affected due to their use of the canonicalize_* functions.
502 ** Changes in behavior
504 timeout now only processes the first signal received from the set
505 it is handling (SIGTERM, SIGINT, ...). This is to support systems that
506 implicitly create threads for some timer functions (like GNU/kFreeBSD).
510 "make dist" no longer builds .tar.gz files.
511 xz is portable enough and in wide-enough use that distributing
512 only .tar.xz files is enough.
515 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.13 (2011-09-08) [stable]
519 chown and chgrp with the -v --from= options, now output the correct owner.
520 I.E. for skipped files, the original ownership is output, not the new one.
521 [bug introduced in sh-utils-2.0g]
523 cp -r could mistakenly change the permissions of an existing destination
524 directory. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.8]
526 cp -u -p would fail to preserve one hard link for each up-to-date copy
527 of a src-hard-linked name in the destination tree. I.e., if s/a and s/b
528 are hard-linked and dst/s/a is up to date, "cp -up s dst" would copy s/b
529 to dst/s/b rather than simply linking dst/s/b to dst/s/a.
530 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
532 fts-using tools (rm, du, chmod, chgrp, chown, chcon) no longer use memory
533 proportional to the number of entries in each directory they process.
534 Before, rm -rf 4-million-entry-directory would consume about 1GiB of memory.
535 Now, it uses less than 30MB, no matter how many entries there are.
536 [this bug was inherent in the use of fts: thus, for rm the bug was
537 introduced in coreutils-8.0. The prior implementation of rm did not use
538 as much memory. du, chmod, chgrp and chown started using fts in 6.0.
539 chcon was added in coreutils-6.9.91 with fts support. ]
541 pr -T no longer ignores a specified LAST_PAGE to stop at.
542 [bug introduced in textutils-1.19q]
544 printf '%d' '"' no longer accesses out-of-bounds memory in the diagnostic.
545 [bug introduced in sh-utils-1.16]
547 split --number l/... no longer creates extraneous files in certain cases.
548 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
550 timeout now sends signals to commands that create their own process group.
551 timeout is no longer confused when starting off with a child process.
552 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.0]
554 unexpand -a now aligns correctly when there are spaces spanning a tabstop,
555 followed by a tab. In that case a space was dropped, causing misalignment.
556 We also now ensure that a space never precedes a tab.
557 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
559 ** Changes in behavior
561 chmod, chown and chgrp now output the original attributes in messages,
562 when -v or -c specified.
564 cp -au (where --preserve=links is implicit) may now replace newer
565 files in the destination, to mirror hard links from the source.
569 date now accepts ISO 8601 date-time strings with "T" as the
570 separator. It has long parsed dates like "2004-02-29 16:21:42"
571 with a space between the date and time strings. Now it also parses
572 "2004-02-29T16:21:42" and fractional-second and time-zone-annotated
573 variants like "2004-02-29T16:21:42.333-07:00"
575 md5sum accepts the new --strict option. With --check, it makes the
576 tool exit non-zero for any invalid input line, rather than just warning.
577 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
579 split accepts a new --filter=CMD option. With it, split filters output
580 through CMD. CMD may use the $FILE environment variable, which is set to
581 the nominal output file name for each invocation of CMD. For example, to
582 split a file into 3 approximately equal parts, which are then compressed:
583 split -n3 --filter='xz > $FILE.xz' big
584 Note the use of single quotes, not double quotes.
585 That creates files named xaa.xz, xab.xz and xac.xz.
587 timeout accepts a new --foreground option, to support commands not started
588 directly from a shell prompt, where the command is interactive or needs to
589 receive signals initiated from the terminal.
593 cp -p now copies trivial NSFv4 ACLs on Solaris 10. Before, it would
594 mistakenly apply a non-trivial ACL to the destination file.
596 cp and ls now support HP-UX 11.11's ACLs, thanks to improved support
599 df now supports disk partitions larger than 4 TiB on MacOS X 10.5
600 or newer and on AIX 5.2 or newer.
602 join --check-order now prints "join: FILE:LINE_NUMBER: bad_line" for an
603 unsorted input, rather than e.g., "join: file 1 is not in sorted order".
605 shuf outputs small subsets of large permutations much more efficiently.
606 For example 'shuf -i1-$((2**32-1)) -n2' no longer exhausts memory.
608 stat -f now recognizes the GPFS, MQUEUE and PSTOREFS file system types.
610 timeout now supports sub-second timeouts.
614 Changes inherited from gnulib address a build failure on HP-UX 11.11
615 when using /opt/ansic/bin/cc.
617 Numerous portability and build improvements inherited via gnulib.
620 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.12 (2011-04-26) [stable]
624 tail's --follow=name option no longer implies --retry on systems
625 with inotify support. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
627 ** Changes in behavior
629 cp's extent-based (FIEMAP) copying code is more reliable in the face
630 of varying and undocumented file system semantics:
631 - it no longer treats unwritten extents specially
632 - a FIEMAP-based extent copy always uses the FIEMAP_FLAG_SYNC flag.
633 Before, it would incur the performance penalty of that sync only
634 for 2.6.38 and older kernels. We thought all problems would be
636 - it now attempts a FIEMAP copy only on a file that appears sparse.
637 Sparse files are relatively unusual, and the copying code incurs
638 the performance penalty of the now-mandatory sync only for them.
642 dd once again compiles on AIX 5.1 and 5.2
645 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.11 (2011-04-13) [stable]
649 cp -a --link would not create a hardlink to a symlink, instead
650 copying the symlink and then not preserving its timestamp.
651 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
653 cp now avoids FIEMAP issues with BTRFS before Linux 2.6.38,
654 which could result in corrupt copies of sparse files.
655 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
657 cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
658 delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
659 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
661 du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR
662 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
664 sort no longer spawns 7 worker threads to sort 16 lines
665 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
667 touch built on Solaris 9 would segfault when run on Solaris 10
668 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
670 wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
671 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
675 dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options,
676 which will discard any cache associated with the files, or
677 processed portion thereof.
679 dd now warns that 'iflag=fullblock' should be used,
680 in various cases where partial reads can cause issues.
682 ** Changes in behavior
684 cp now avoids syncing files when possible, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
685 The sync is only needed on Linux kernels before 2.6.39.
686 [The sync was introduced in coreutils-8.10]
688 cp now copies empty extents efficiently, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
689 It no longer reads the zero bytes from the input, and also can efficiently
690 create a hole in the output file when --sparse=always is specified.
692 df now aligns columns consistently, and no longer wraps entries
693 with longer device identifiers, over two lines.
695 install now rejects its long-deprecated --preserve_context option.
696 Use --preserve-context instead.
698 test now accepts "==" as a synonym for "="
701 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
705 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
706 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
707 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
708 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
709 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
711 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
712 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
714 join -v2 now ensures the default output format prints the match field
715 at the start of the line when it is different to the match field for
716 the first file. [bug present in "the beginning".]
718 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
719 reject file names invalid for that file system.
721 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
722 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
726 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
727 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
728 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
729 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
730 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
731 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
732 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
733 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
735 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
736 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
737 the same number of fields are output for each line.
739 ** Changes in behavior
741 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
742 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
743 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
746 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
750 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
751 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
752 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
755 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
759 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
760 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
762 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
763 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
765 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
766 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
768 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
769 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
770 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
771 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
773 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
774 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
776 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
777 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
778 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
780 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
782 ** Changes in behavior
784 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
785 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
786 to the number of available processors.
790 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
793 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
797 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
798 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
799 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
800 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
802 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
803 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
804 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
806 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
807 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
809 ** Changes in behavior
811 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
812 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
814 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
815 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
816 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
817 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
818 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
819 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
821 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
822 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
823 the same way as the others.
826 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
830 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
831 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
832 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
834 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
835 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
837 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
838 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
839 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
841 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
842 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
844 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
845 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
847 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
848 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
849 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
851 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
852 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
853 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
854 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
858 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
859 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
861 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
864 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
865 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
867 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
869 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
870 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
871 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
873 ** Changes in behavior
875 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
876 rather than its aliased target.
878 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
879 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
880 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
882 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
883 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
884 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
885 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
886 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
887 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
888 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
889 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
891 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
893 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
895 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
896 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
899 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
900 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
901 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
902 control like taskset for example.
904 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
906 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
907 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
908 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
909 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
910 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
911 includes %C when context information is available.
913 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
914 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
915 rather than a file system attribute.
917 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
918 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
919 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
920 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
922 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
923 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
924 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
926 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
927 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
928 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
931 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
935 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
936 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
938 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
940 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
941 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
943 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
944 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
945 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
946 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
948 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
949 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
950 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
954 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
955 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
957 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
958 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
959 duration after the initial signal was sent.
961 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
962 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
963 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
964 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
965 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
966 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
967 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
968 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
969 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
971 ** Changes in behavior
973 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
974 sequence when it would be a no-op.
976 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
977 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
980 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
984 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
985 of available processors, which may not have been the case
986 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
987 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
991 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
992 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
994 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
995 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
996 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
997 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
999 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
1000 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
1001 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
1004 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
1008 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
1009 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
1010 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
1012 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
1013 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
1014 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
1016 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
1017 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
1019 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
1020 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
1021 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
1022 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
1024 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
1025 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
1026 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
1028 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
1029 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
1030 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
1031 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1033 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
1034 renamed-aside and then recreated.
1035 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1037 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
1038 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
1039 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
1040 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1042 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
1043 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
1044 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
1046 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
1047 processes will not intersperse their output.
1048 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
1051 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
1055 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
1056 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
1058 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
1059 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
1061 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
1062 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
1063 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
1064 the presence of the empty string argument.
1065 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
1067 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
1068 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
1069 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
1070 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1072 tail without -f no longer accesses uninitialized memory
1073 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
1075 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
1076 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
1077 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
1079 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
1080 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
1081 and with a malicious user on the same system
1082 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
1083 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
1086 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
1090 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
1091 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
1092 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
1094 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
1095 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
1096 offending directory and all "contents."
1098 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
1099 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
1100 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
1102 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
1103 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
1104 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1106 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
1107 processes will not intersperse their output.
1108 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
1109 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
1111 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
1112 output the name of the file to stdout.
1113 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
1115 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
1116 call fails with errno == EACCES.
1117 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
1119 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
1120 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
1123 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
1124 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
1125 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
1127 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
1128 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
1129 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
1130 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
1131 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
1132 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1134 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
1135 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
1136 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
1137 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
1139 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
1140 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
1142 ** Changes in behavior
1144 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
1145 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
1146 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
1147 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
1148 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
1150 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
1151 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
1152 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
1153 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
1155 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
1157 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
1158 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
1159 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
1160 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
1161 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
1165 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
1169 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
1170 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
1172 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
1173 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
1175 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
1176 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
1177 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
1179 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
1180 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
1183 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
1187 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
1188 when the source file doesn't have write access.
1189 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1191 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
1192 to accommodate leap seconds.
1193 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
1195 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
1196 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
1197 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1199 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
1201 "ls -is" is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
1202 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
1203 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
1205 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
1206 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
1207 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
1208 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
1209 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
1213 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
1214 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
1215 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceding name is a
1216 directory or a symlink to a directory.
1218 ** Changes in behavior
1220 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
1221 environment variable is set.
1223 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
1224 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
1225 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
1229 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
1230 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
1231 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
1232 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
1234 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
1235 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
1236 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
1237 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
1241 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
1242 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
1243 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
1245 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
1246 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
1247 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
1248 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
1249 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
1250 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
1251 another improvement:
1253 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
1254 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
1257 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
1261 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
1262 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
1263 and libraries tested at configure time.
1264 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1266 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
1267 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1269 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
1270 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1272 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
1273 printing a summary to stderr.
1274 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1276 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
1277 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
1278 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
1280 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
1281 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
1283 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
1284 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
1285 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
1286 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1288 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
1289 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
1290 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
1291 which is relatively unusual.
1292 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1294 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
1295 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
1296 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
1297 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
1298 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
1299 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
1300 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1304 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
1305 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
1306 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
1307 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
1308 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
1312 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
1313 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
1315 ** Changes in behavior
1317 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
1318 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
1319 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
1320 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
1321 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
1324 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
1328 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
1329 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
1331 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
1332 before data copying has started.
1334 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
1335 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1337 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
1338 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
1339 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
1340 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1342 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
1343 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
1344 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
1345 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
1347 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
1352 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
1353 for its standard streams.
1355 ** Changes in behavior
1357 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
1358 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
1359 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
1360 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
1361 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
1362 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
1364 ** Deprecated options
1366 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
1367 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
1371 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
1373 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
1374 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
1375 a btrfs file system.
1377 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
1379 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
1380 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
1382 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
1383 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
1386 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
1390 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
1391 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
1392 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
1393 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
1395 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
1396 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
1397 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
1398 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
1399 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
1404 make check: two tests have been corrected
1408 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
1409 inherited from gnulib.
1412 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
1416 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
1417 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
1418 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
1419 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
1421 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
1422 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
1424 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
1426 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
1427 systems without xattr support.
1429 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
1430 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
1431 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
1433 ** Changes in behavior
1435 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
1436 This is mainly noticeable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
1437 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
1438 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
1440 ** Improved robustness
1442 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
1443 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
1444 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
1445 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
1446 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
1447 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
1448 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
1449 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
1450 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1454 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
1455 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
1457 'id -G $USER' now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
1458 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
1459 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
1460 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1461 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1464 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
1468 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
1469 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
1470 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
1474 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
1475 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
1476 data was read, or on process exit.
1477 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1479 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
1480 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
1481 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
1482 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1484 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
1485 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
1486 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
1487 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1489 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
1490 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
1492 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
1493 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1495 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
1496 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
1497 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
1499 ** Changes in behavior
1501 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
1502 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
1503 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
1505 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
1506 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
1508 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
1509 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
1510 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
1513 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
1517 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
1519 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
1520 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
1521 install: Never copies xattrs
1523 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
1524 from overwriting any existing destination file
1526 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
1527 mode where this feature is available.
1529 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
1530 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
1531 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
1532 do not modify the destination at all.
1534 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
1536 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
1540 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
1541 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
1543 cp uses much less memory in some situations
1545 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
1546 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
1548 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
1549 processing the first file name
1551 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
1552 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
1553 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
1554 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1556 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
1557 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
1559 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
1560 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
1563 ** Changes in behavior
1565 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
1566 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
1568 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
1569 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
1570 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
1572 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
1573 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
1575 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
1577 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
1578 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
1579 is still marked with a '+'.
1582 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
1586 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
1587 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
1591 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
1592 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
1593 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
1594 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
1595 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
1596 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
1598 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1599 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1601 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
1602 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
1604 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
1606 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
1607 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
1608 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
1610 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
1611 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
1613 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
1614 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
1615 used to factor large numbers.
1617 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
1620 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
1622 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
1624 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
1625 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
1627 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
1628 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
1629 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
1630 maximum command-line (argv) length.
1632 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
1633 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
1634 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
1636 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
1637 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
1641 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
1643 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
1644 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
1646 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
1647 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
1649 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
1651 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
1652 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
1656 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
1657 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
1658 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
1660 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
1662 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
1663 no matter how many files are in a given directory. I.e., to list a directory
1664 with very many files, ls -1U is much more efficient.
1666 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
1667 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
1668 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
1670 ** Changes in behavior
1672 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
1673 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
1676 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
1680 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve nanosecond resolution on
1681 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimensat' and
1682 'futimens' system calls.
1686 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
1688 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
1689 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
1690 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
1692 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
1693 with no USERNAME argument.
1695 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
1696 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
1697 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
1699 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
1700 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
1701 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
1702 number of fields for some inputs.
1704 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
1705 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1707 ** Changes in behavior
1709 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1710 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1713 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1717 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1719 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1720 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1721 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1722 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1724 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1725 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1727 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1728 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1730 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1731 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1733 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1734 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1735 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1736 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1738 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1739 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1740 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1741 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1742 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1743 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1745 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1746 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1748 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1749 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1750 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1752 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1753 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1755 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1756 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1758 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1759 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1760 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1761 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1763 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1764 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1766 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1767 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1769 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1770 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1771 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1775 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1776 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1778 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1779 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1780 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1781 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1785 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1786 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1788 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1790 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1794 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1795 which have negative errno values.
1799 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1803 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1807 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1808 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1811 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1815 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1816 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1817 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1819 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1820 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1821 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1822 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1826 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1827 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1828 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1829 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1832 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1836 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1838 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1839 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1840 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1843 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1847 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1848 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1850 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1852 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1854 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1856 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1860 ** Changes in behavior
1862 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1863 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1865 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1866 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1868 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1869 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1870 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1874 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1875 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1876 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1877 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1878 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1879 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1880 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1881 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1882 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1883 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1884 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1886 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1887 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1888 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1891 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1894 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1895 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1896 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1898 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1899 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1900 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1903 ** New build options
1905 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1906 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1907 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1908 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1910 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1911 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1912 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1913 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1914 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1915 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1916 of "make check" fail.
1918 ** Remove deprecated options
1920 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1921 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1922 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1923 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1924 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1926 ** Improved robustness
1928 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1929 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1930 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1931 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1932 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1933 loss of the contents of a/f.
1935 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1936 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1940 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1941 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1942 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1944 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1945 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1946 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1947 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1949 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1950 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1951 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1952 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1953 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1954 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1955 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1956 destination is a symlink.
1958 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1960 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1961 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1963 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1964 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1966 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1968 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1969 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1971 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1972 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1974 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1977 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1978 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1980 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1981 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1983 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1984 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1985 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1986 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1988 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1989 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1990 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1992 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1993 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1994 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1996 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1997 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1998 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1999 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
2001 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
2002 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
2003 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
2005 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
2006 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
2008 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
2009 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
2011 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
2013 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
2014 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
2015 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
2017 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
2018 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
2020 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
2021 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
2023 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
2024 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
2026 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
2027 [present in the original version]
2030 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
2034 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
2036 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
2037 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
2038 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
2040 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
2041 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
2043 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
2047 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
2048 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
2050 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
2051 support but with insufficient /proc support.
2053 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
2054 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
2056 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
2057 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
2058 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
2059 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
2060 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
2061 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
2063 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
2064 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
2067 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
2068 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
2070 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
2073 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
2074 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
2075 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
2077 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
2078 directory is unreadable.
2080 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
2081 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
2082 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
2084 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
2085 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
2086 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
2087 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
2088 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
2091 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
2092 Before it would print nothing.
2094 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
2096 "rm -rf D" would emit a misleading diagnostic when failing to
2097 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
2098 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
2099 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
2100 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
2101 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
2102 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
2103 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
2105 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
2109 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
2110 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
2111 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
2113 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
2114 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
2115 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
2116 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
2119 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
2123 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
2124 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
2125 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
2126 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
2127 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
2128 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
2129 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
2131 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
2132 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
2133 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
2134 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
2135 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
2136 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
2137 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
2138 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
2140 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
2141 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
2142 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
2145 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
2149 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
2150 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
2152 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
2153 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
2154 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
2156 ** Improved robustness
2158 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
2159 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
2160 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
2163 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
2167 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
2168 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
2169 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
2170 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
2171 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
2173 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
2177 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
2180 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
2184 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
2185 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
2186 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
2187 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
2189 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
2190 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
2192 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
2193 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
2194 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
2197 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
2199 ** Improved robustness
2201 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
2202 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
2204 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
2205 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
2206 or NFS-mounted partition.
2208 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
2209 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
2213 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
2214 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
2215 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
2216 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
2217 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
2218 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
2220 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
2221 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
2223 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
2224 or neglect to report file removal.
2226 For the "groups" command:
2228 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
2229 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
2231 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
2233 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
2235 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
2239 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
2240 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
2243 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
2245 ** Changes in behavior
2247 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
2248 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
2249 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
2250 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
2252 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., 'rm -fr /'
2253 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
2254 a final './' or '../' component.
2256 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
2257 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
2258 this only for pipes.
2260 ** Infrastructure changes
2262 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
2263 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
2264 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
2265 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
2269 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
2270 name is "." or "..".
2272 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
2273 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
2274 dirent.d_type support.
2276 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
2277 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
2279 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
2280 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
2281 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
2282 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
2285 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
2287 ** Changes in behavior
2289 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
2293 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
2294 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
2298 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
2299 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
2300 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
2302 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
2303 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
2305 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
2306 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
2308 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
2310 ** Improved robustness
2312 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
2313 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
2314 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
2316 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
2317 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
2320 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
2321 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
2323 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
2324 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
2326 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
2327 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
2329 ** Changes in behavior
2331 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
2332 where the two are distinct.
2334 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
2335 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
2336 'chmod 755 DIR' and 'chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
2337 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
2338 similarly for 'mkdir -m 755 DIR' and 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
2339 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
2340 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
2341 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., 'mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
2342 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
2343 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
2344 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
2345 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
2346 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 'mkdir -m
2347 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but 'chmod 777 D' clears it.
2348 Conversely, Solaris 10 'mkdir -m 777 D', 'mkdir -m g-s D', and
2349 'chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
2350 something like 'chmod g-s D' to clear it.
2352 'cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
2353 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
2354 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
2356 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
2357 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
2358 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
2359 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
2362 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
2363 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
2367 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
2368 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
2369 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
2370 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
2372 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
2373 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
2374 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
2376 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
2377 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
2378 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
2379 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
2380 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
2383 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
2384 e.g., 'mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
2386 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
2387 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
2388 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
2389 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
2391 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
2392 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
2393 successful and the output is easier to parse.
2395 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
2396 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
2397 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
2398 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
2400 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
2401 and sticky) with the -m option.
2403 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
2404 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
2405 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
2406 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
2407 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
2409 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
2410 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
2412 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
2416 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
2417 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
2418 You no longer need the '-f%.f' in 'seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
2419 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
2421 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
2423 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
2425 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
2426 silently ignoring one of them.
2428 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
2429 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
2430 containing this change was 5.92.
2432 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
2433 automatically newline terminated.
2435 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
2436 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
2437 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
2438 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
2441 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
2442 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2443 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
2446 ** Scheduled for removal
2448 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
2449 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
2451 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
2452 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
2453 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
2454 command to unlink a directory.
2456 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
2457 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
2458 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
2459 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
2463 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
2464 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
2465 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
2466 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
2467 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
2468 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
2472 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
2473 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
2475 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
2477 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
2478 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
2479 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
2481 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
2482 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
2485 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
2486 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
2488 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
2489 list directories before files.
2491 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
2492 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
2493 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
2494 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
2497 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
2499 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and 'R' ordering option.
2501 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
2502 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
2503 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
2505 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2506 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2510 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
2511 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
2512 usually printing nothing.
2514 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
2516 When 'cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
2517 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
2518 them with hard-linked directories.
2520 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
2521 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
2522 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
2524 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
2525 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
2526 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
2528 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
2531 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
2532 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
2534 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
2535 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
2537 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
2538 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
2540 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
2541 all command-line arguments.
2543 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
2545 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
2547 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
2548 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
2550 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
2552 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
2553 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
2554 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
2555 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
2556 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
2558 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
2559 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
2561 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
2562 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
2563 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
2564 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
2566 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
2568 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
2572 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
2573 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
2575 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
2576 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
2578 md5sum once again defaults to using the ' ' non-binary marker
2579 (rather than the '*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
2581 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
2582 a directory like 'nonexistent/.'
2584 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
2585 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
2587 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
2589 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
2590 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
2591 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
2594 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
2596 ** Build-related bug fixes
2598 installing .mo files would fail
2601 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
2605 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
2607 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
2610 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
2614 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
2615 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
2619 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
2621 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
2622 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
2624 ** Deprecated options
2626 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
2627 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use '-k' instead.
2629 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
2633 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
2635 ** Bring back support for 'head -NUM', 'tail -NUM', etc. even when
2636 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
2637 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
2638 conforming to older POSIX versions.
2640 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
2643 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
2649 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
2654 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
2656 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
2658 date -I TIMESPEC (use 'date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
2659 od -w WIDTH (use 'od -wWIDTH' instead)
2660 pr -S STRING (use 'pr -SSTRING' instead)
2662 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
2663 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
2664 problematic usages. These include:
2666 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
2667 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
2668 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
2669 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
2670 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
2671 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
2672 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
2673 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
2674 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
2676 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
2677 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
2679 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
2680 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
2681 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
2682 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
2684 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
2685 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
2686 between binary and text files.
2688 The following programs now always use text input/output:
2692 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
2696 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
2697 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
2699 head tac tail tee tr
2700 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
2702 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
2703 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
2705 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2706 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2707 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2709 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2711 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2713 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2714 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2715 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2719 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2721 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2722 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2724 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2725 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2726 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2730 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2731 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2735 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2736 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2737 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2741 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2742 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2746 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2748 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2750 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2754 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2755 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2756 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2758 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2759 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2760 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2761 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2762 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2764 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2768 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2769 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2770 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2772 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2774 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2775 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2776 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2777 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2779 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2781 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2782 rather than silently wrapping around.
2784 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2785 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2787 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2788 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2790 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the '.'-relative
2791 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2792 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2793 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2795 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2797 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2799 ** Improved robustness
2801 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2802 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2803 no matter how large the result.
2805 ** Improved portability
2807 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2808 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2810 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2812 'rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2813 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2814 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2816 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2817 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2821 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2822 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2824 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2826 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2827 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2828 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2829 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2831 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2832 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2834 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2835 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2836 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2838 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2840 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2841 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2843 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2844 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2846 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2848 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2849 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2851 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2852 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2854 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2855 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2856 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2858 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2860 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2862 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2866 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2868 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2869 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2870 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2872 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2873 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2875 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2876 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2877 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2879 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2880 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2882 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2883 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2884 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2885 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2887 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2888 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2890 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2891 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2892 the file system does not support it.
2894 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2896 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2897 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2899 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2901 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2902 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2904 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2905 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2906 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2907 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2909 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2910 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2913 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2914 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2915 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2916 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2918 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2919 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2920 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2921 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2923 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2924 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2926 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2928 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2929 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2930 reporting incorrect results.
2934 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2935 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2937 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2940 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2942 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2943 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2945 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2946 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2948 'pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to 'pr -N' when also using
2951 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2952 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2953 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2954 the file name does not look like a page range.
2956 printf has several changes:
2958 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2959 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2961 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2962 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2963 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2965 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2966 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2969 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2970 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2972 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2973 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2975 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2977 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2978 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2980 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2982 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2984 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2985 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2986 when first encountering the directory.
2990 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2991 output; POSIX requires this.
2993 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2994 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2996 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2998 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2999 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
3001 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
3002 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
3004 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
3005 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
3006 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
3007 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
3008 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
3009 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
3010 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
3012 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
3013 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
3014 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
3016 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
3017 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
3019 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
3021 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
3023 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
3024 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
3025 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
3026 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
3028 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
3032 For efficiency, 'sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
3033 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
3034 some relatively-contrived examples like 'cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
3035 are no longer safe, as 'sort' might start writing F before 'cat' is
3036 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless '-m' is used.
3038 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
3039 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
3040 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
3042 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
3043 is longer than PATH_MAX.
3045 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
3046 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
3048 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
3049 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
3050 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
3051 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
3052 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
3054 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
3055 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
3057 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
3058 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
3060 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
3062 nocreat do not create the output file
3063 excl fail if the output file already exists
3064 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
3065 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
3067 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
3069 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
3070 direct use direct I/O for data
3071 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
3072 sync likewise, but also for metadata
3073 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
3074 nofollow do not follow symlinks
3075 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
3077 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
3079 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
3080 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append '\n' to the format
3083 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
3084 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
3085 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
3086 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
3087 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
3088 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
3090 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
3091 list of NUL-terminated file names.
3093 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
3096 Dates like 'January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
3098 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
3100 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
3101 prefixed by '@'. For example, '@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
3103 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
3104 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
3105 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
3107 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
3108 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
3109 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
3111 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
3113 'date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
3114 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
3116 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
3117 for compatibility with bash.
3119 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
3121 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
3122 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
3123 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
3124 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
3126 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
3127 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
3129 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
3130 ls supports TABSIZE.
3131 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
3132 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
3133 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
3135 The usual '--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
3138 'od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
3140 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
3141 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
3142 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
3143 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
3144 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
3145 an offset, not as a file name.
3147 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
3148 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
3150 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
3151 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
3153 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
3154 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
3156 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
3157 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
3158 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
3160 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
3161 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
3163 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
3164 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
3168 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
3170 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
3172 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
3176 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
3177 or more arguments between partitions.
3179 'cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
3180 holes in the destination.
3182 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
3183 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
3184 this change, if you ran 'ssh localhost', then 'nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
3185 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
3186 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
3187 terminates immediately.
3189 'expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
3191 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
3193 The '|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
3194 arguments are null or zero. E.g., 'expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
3195 not the empty string.
3197 The '|' and '&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
3198 'expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
3202 'chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
3203 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
3204 containing '.' that happens to equal 'user.group'.
3207 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
3214 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
3218 'cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
3219 declare stat and lstat as 'static inline' functions.
3221 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
3222 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
3224 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
3225 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
3226 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
3229 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
3233 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
3234 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
3236 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
3237 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
3239 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
3240 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
3241 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
3243 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
3245 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
3248 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
3250 ** Configuration option
3252 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
3253 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
3257 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
3258 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
3262 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
3263 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
3264 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
3267 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
3268 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
3269 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
3270 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
3271 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
3272 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
3273 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3276 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
3280 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
3281 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
3282 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
3284 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
3285 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
3287 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
3289 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
3290 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
3291 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
3292 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
3294 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
3296 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
3297 not just the ones that reference directories
3299 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
3300 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
3302 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
3303 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
3304 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
3306 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
3307 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
3308 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
3309 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
3310 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
3311 ragged when a datum was too wide.
3313 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
3318 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
3319 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
3321 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
3323 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
3325 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
3327 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
3328 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
3330 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
3331 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
3333 dd 'unblock' and 'sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
3335 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
3339 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
3341 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
3343 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
3344 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
3345 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
3346 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
3347 resolution is the best we can do right now.
3349 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
3350 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
3352 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
3353 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
3355 'sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
3356 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
3358 who -l now means 'who --login', not 'who --lookup', per POSIX.
3359 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
3360 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
3364 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via 'mv B b' when 'B' is
3365 the same directory entry as 'b' no longer destroys the directory entry
3366 referenced by both 'b' and 'B'. Note that this would happen only on
3367 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
3368 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
3369 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
3370 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
3371 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
3372 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
3373 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
3374 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
3375 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
3376 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
3377 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
3379 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in '%'
3381 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
3382 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
3384 'split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
3386 'df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
3388 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
3389 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
3391 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
3393 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
3394 without a trailing newline.
3396 'tail -n0 -f FILE' and 'tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
3397 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
3399 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
3402 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
3406 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
3408 'test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
3410 'test -t', 'test --help', and 'test --version' now silently exit
3411 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
3412 'test -t 1'. To get help and version info for 'test', use
3413 '[ --help' and '[ --version'.
3415 'test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
3417 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
3418 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
3419 be printed without leading spaces.
3421 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
3422 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
3427 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
3428 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
3429 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
3431 '[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
3433 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
3434 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
3436 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
3437 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
3439 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
3440 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
3442 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
3444 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
3446 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
3448 'sort --version' and 'sort --help' fail, as they should
3449 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
3451 'su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
3453 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
3455 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
3456 byte offsets are specified.
3459 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
3462 - new program: '[' (much like 'test')
3465 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
3466 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
3467 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
3468 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
3469 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
3470 - chown: '.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
3471 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
3472 on such a system, then it still accepts '.', by default. If chown
3473 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
3474 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
3475 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
3476 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
3477 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
3478 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
3479 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
3480 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
3481 directory where M has write access.
3482 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
3483 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
3484 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
3487 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
3488 - 'du /' once again prints the '/' on the last line
3489 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
3490 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
3491 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
3492 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted 'file truncated' warning.
3493 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
3494 - df and 'readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
3495 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
3496 - 'env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
3497 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
3498 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
3499 - mv now removes 'a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
3500 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
3501 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
3502 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
3503 - date's '-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
3504 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
3505 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like '-72x'
3506 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
3507 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
3508 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
3509 appeared one additional time.
3511 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
3512 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
3513 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
3514 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
3517 - 'kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than '?') on systems
3518 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
3519 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
3520 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
3521 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
3522 Before 'rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
3523 if there were more than 338.
3525 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
3526 - false --help now exits nonzero
3529 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
3530 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
3531 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
3532 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
3535 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
3536 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of '0'
3537 * seq now accepts " " and "'" as valid format flag characters
3538 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
3539 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
3542 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
3543 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
3544 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
3545 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to "infinite" recursion
3546 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
3547 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
3548 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3551 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
3552 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
3553 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
3554 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
3555 * 'df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
3556 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
3558 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3559 under certain unusual conditions
3560 * mv and 'cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
3561 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
3564 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3565 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
3566 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
3567 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
3568 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
3569 * df now always displays under 'Filesystem', the device file name
3570 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
3571 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
3572 'df /dev/hda' would list '/dev/hda' as the 'Filesystem', rather than say
3573 /dev/hda3 (the device on which '/' is mounted), as it does now.
3574 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
3575 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
3576 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
3577 'test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
3578 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
3579 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
3582 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
3583 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
3586 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
3587 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
3588 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
3589 involving hard-linked directories
3590 * 'who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
3591 * df now displays a mount point (usually '/') for non-mounted
3592 character-special and block files
3595 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
3596 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
3597 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
3598 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
3599 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
3600 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
3601 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
3602 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
3603 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
3605 * ls dangling-symlink now prints 'dangling-symlink'.
3606 Before, it would fail with 'no such file or directory'.
3607 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
3608 attributes of 'symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
3609 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
3610 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
3611 specified on the command line.
3612 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
3613 Before, 'shred --zero file' would produce 'shred: missing file argument',
3614 and worse, 'shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
3615 the first file untouched.
3616 * readlink: new program
3617 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
3618 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
3619 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
3620 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
3621 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
3622 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
3625 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
3626 * 'ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
3627 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
3628 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
3629 * 'du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
3630 * 'du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
3631 * In the unlikely event that running 'du /' resulted in 'stat ("/", ...)'
3632 failing, du would give a diagnostic about '' (empty string) rather than '/'.
3633 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
3634 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
3635 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
3636 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
3638 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
3639 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
3640 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
3642 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
3643 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
3644 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
3645 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
3646 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
3647 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
3648 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
3649 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this 'yes|nl -s%n'
3652 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
3653 * 'ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
3656 * 'rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
3657 * 'tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
3658 * 'mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
3659 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
3660 * printf now honors the '--' command line delimiter
3661 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
3662 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
3665 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
3666 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
3668 ========================================================================
3669 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
3670 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3673 * 'rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
3675 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3676 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
3677 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
3678 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
3679 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
3680 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
3681 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
3682 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 through 4.1.9.
3683 * 'rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
3684 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
3685 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
3686 The old options will continue to work for a while.
3688 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
3689 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
3690 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
3691 * 'touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
3693 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
3696 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
3698 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
3699 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
3700 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
3701 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
3702 * The obsolete usage 'touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
3703 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
3704 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3707 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3708 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3709 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3710 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3711 A missing 'B' (e.g. '1M') has the same meaning as before.
3712 A trailing 'B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3713 The nonstandard 'D' suffix (e.g. '1MD') is now obsolescent.
3714 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3715 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3716 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3717 * You can omit an integer '1' before a block size suffix,
3718 e.g. 'df -BG' is equivalent to 'df -B 1G' and to 'df --block-size=1G'.
3719 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3720 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3721 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3722 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3724 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3725 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3727 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3728 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3729 * dd once again uses 'lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3730 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3731 resort to emulating 'skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3732 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3734 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3735 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3736 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3737 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3738 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3739 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., 'chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3740 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3742 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3743 the source files in the following example:
3744 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3745 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3746 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3747 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3748 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3749 links between source files with --preserve=links
3750 * cp accepts new options:
3751 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3752 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3753 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3754 to '--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3755 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3756 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3757 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3758 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off '-i'.
3759 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3761 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3762 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3763 * mv: fix the bug whereby 'mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3764 even though it's older than dest.
3765 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3766 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3767 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3768 * 'ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3769 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3771 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3772 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3773 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3774 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3775 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3776 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3777 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3779 - The 'full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3780 '2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3781 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3783 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3784 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3785 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3786 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3787 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3788 This is the default.
3790 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3791 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3792 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3793 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3794 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3796 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3799 ========================================================================
3800 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3801 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3804 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3805 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3807 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3808 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3809 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3810 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3811 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3813 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3814 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3815 that specifies a non-directory
3818 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3819 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3820 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3821 the long option '--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3822 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3823 - 'date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use 'date --iso-8601'.
3824 - 'nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use 'nice -n NUM'.
3825 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3826 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3827 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3828 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3829 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3830 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3831 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3832 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3833 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3834 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3835 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3836 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3837 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3838 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3839 This problem arose only with relative date strings like 'last monday'.
3840 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3841 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3843 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3844 * 'date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3845 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3847 * 'date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3849 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3850 'write error' when invoked with the --version option
3852 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3853 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3854 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3855 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the 'C' locale
3856 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3858 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3859 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3860 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3861 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3862 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3864 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3866 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3867 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3868 * still more portability fixes
3869 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3870 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3872 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3874 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3876 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3878 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3879 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3880 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3881 there is any time remaining
3882 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3884 ========================================================================
3885 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3886 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3888 This package began as the union of the following:
3889 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3891 ========================================================================
3893 Copyright (C) 2001-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3895 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3896 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3897 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3898 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3899 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the "GNU Free
3900 Documentation License" file as part of this distribution.