1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
10 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
14 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
15 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
19 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
20 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
21 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
22 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
23 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
24 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
26 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
27 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
29 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
30 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
32 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
34 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
35 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
36 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
38 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
39 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
41 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
42 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
43 used to factor large numbers.
45 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
48 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
50 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
52 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
53 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
55 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
56 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
57 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
58 maximum command-line (argv) length.
60 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
61 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
62 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
64 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
65 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
69 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
71 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
72 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
74 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
75 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
77 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
79 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
80 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
84 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
85 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
86 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
88 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
90 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
91 no matter how many files are in a given directory
93 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
94 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
95 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
97 ** Changes in behavior
99 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
100 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
103 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
107 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
109 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
110 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
111 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
113 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
114 with no USERNAME argument.
116 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
117 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
118 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
120 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
121 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
122 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
123 number of fields for some inputs.
125 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
126 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
128 ** Changes in behavior
130 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
131 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
134 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
138 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
140 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
141 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
142 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
143 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
145 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
146 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
148 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
149 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
151 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
152 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
154 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
155 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
156 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
157 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
159 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
160 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
161 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
162 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
163 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
164 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
166 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
167 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
169 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
170 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
171 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
173 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
174 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
176 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
177 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
179 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
180 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
181 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
182 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
184 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
185 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
187 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
188 in more cases when a directory is empty.
190 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
191 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
192 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
196 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
197 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
199 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
200 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
201 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
202 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
206 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
207 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
209 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
211 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
215 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
216 which have negative errno values.
220 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
224 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
228 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
229 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
232 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
236 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
237 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
238 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
240 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
241 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
242 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
243 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
247 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
248 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
249 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
250 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
253 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
257 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
259 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
260 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
261 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
264 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
268 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
269 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
271 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
273 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
275 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
277 ** Programs no longer installed by default
281 ** Changes in behavior
283 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
284 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
286 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
287 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
289 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
290 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
291 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
295 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
296 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
297 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
298 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
299 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
300 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
301 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
302 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
303 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
304 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
305 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
307 The following commands and options now support the standard size
308 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
309 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
312 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
315 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
316 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
317 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
319 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
320 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
321 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
326 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
327 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
328 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
329 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
331 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
332 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
333 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
334 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
335 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
336 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
337 of "make check" fail.
339 ** Remove deprecated options
341 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
342 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
343 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
344 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
345 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
347 ** Improved robustness
349 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
350 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
351 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
352 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
353 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
354 loss of the contents of a/f.
356 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
357 in its 35-colon command-line argument
361 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
362 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
363 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
365 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
366 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
367 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
368 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
370 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
371 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
372 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
373 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
374 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
375 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
376 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
377 destination is a symlink.
379 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
381 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
382 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
384 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
385 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
387 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
389 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
390 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
392 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
393 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
395 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
398 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
399 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
401 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
402 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
404 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
405 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
406 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
407 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
409 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
410 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
411 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
413 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
414 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
415 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
417 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
418 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
419 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
420 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
422 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
423 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
424 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
426 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
427 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
429 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
430 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
432 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
434 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
435 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
436 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
438 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
439 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
441 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
442 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
444 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
445 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
447 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
448 [present in the original version]
451 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
455 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
457 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
458 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
459 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
461 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
462 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
464 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
468 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
469 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
471 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
472 support but with insufficient /proc support.
474 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
475 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
477 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
478 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
479 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
480 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
481 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
482 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
484 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
485 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
488 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
489 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
491 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
494 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
495 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
496 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
498 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
499 directory is unreadable.
501 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
502 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
503 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
505 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
506 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
507 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
508 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
509 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
512 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
513 Before it would print nothing.
515 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
517 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
518 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
519 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
520 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
521 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
522 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
523 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
524 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
526 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
530 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
531 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
532 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
534 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
535 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
536 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
537 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
540 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
544 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
545 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
546 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
547 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
548 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
549 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
550 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
552 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
553 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
554 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
555 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
556 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
557 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
558 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
559 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
561 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
562 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
563 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
566 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
570 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
571 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
573 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
574 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
575 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
577 ** Improved robustness
579 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
580 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
581 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
584 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
588 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
589 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
590 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
591 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
592 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
594 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
598 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
601 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
605 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
606 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
607 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
608 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
610 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
611 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
613 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
614 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
615 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
618 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
620 ** Improved robustness
622 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
623 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
625 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
626 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
627 or NFS-mounted partition.
629 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
630 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
634 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
635 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
636 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
637 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
638 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
639 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
641 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
642 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
644 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
645 or neglect to report file removal.
647 For the "groups" command:
649 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
650 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
652 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
654 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
656 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
660 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
661 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
664 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
666 ** Changes in behavior
668 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
669 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
670 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
671 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
673 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
674 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
675 a final `./' or `../' component.
677 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
678 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
681 ** Infrastructure changes
683 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
684 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
685 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
686 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
690 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
693 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
694 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
695 dirent.d_type support.
697 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
698 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
700 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
701 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
702 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
703 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
706 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
708 ** Changes in behavior
710 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
714 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
715 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
719 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
720 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
721 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
723 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
724 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
726 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
727 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
729 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
731 ** Improved robustness
733 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
734 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
735 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
737 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
738 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
741 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
742 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
744 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
745 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
747 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
748 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
750 ** Changes in behavior
752 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
753 where the two are distinct.
755 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
756 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
757 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
758 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
759 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
760 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
761 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
762 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
763 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
764 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
765 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
766 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
767 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
768 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
769 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
770 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
771 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
773 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
774 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
775 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
777 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
778 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
779 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
780 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
783 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
784 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
788 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
789 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
790 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
791 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
793 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
794 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
795 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
797 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
798 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
799 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
800 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
801 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
804 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
805 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
807 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
808 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
809 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
810 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
812 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
813 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
814 successful and the output is easier to parse.
816 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
817 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
818 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
819 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
821 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
822 and sticky) with the -m option.
824 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
825 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
826 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
827 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
828 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
830 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
831 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
833 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
837 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
838 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
839 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
840 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
842 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
844 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
846 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
847 silently ignoring one of them.
849 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
850 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
851 containing this change was 5.92.
853 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
854 automatically newline terminated.
856 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
857 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
858 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
859 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
862 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
863 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
864 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
867 ** Scheduled for removal
869 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
870 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
872 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
873 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
874 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
875 command to unlink a directory.
877 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
878 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
879 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
880 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
884 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
885 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
886 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
887 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
888 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
889 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
893 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
894 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
896 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
898 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
899 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
900 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
902 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
903 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
906 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
907 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
909 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
910 list directories before files.
912 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
913 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
914 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
915 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
918 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
920 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
922 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
923 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
924 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
926 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
927 list of NUL-terminated file names.
931 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
932 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
933 usually printing nothing.
935 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
937 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
938 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
939 them with hard-linked directories.
941 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
942 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
943 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
945 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
946 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
947 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
949 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
952 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
953 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
955 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
956 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
958 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
959 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
961 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
962 all command-line arguments.
964 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
966 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
968 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
969 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
971 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
973 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
974 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
975 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
976 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
977 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
979 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
980 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
982 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
983 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
984 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
985 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
987 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
989 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
993 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
994 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
996 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
997 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
999 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1000 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1002 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1003 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1005 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1006 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1008 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1010 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1011 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1012 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1015 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1017 ** Build-related bug fixes
1019 installing .mo files would fail
1022 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1026 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1028 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1031 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1035 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1036 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1040 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1042 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1043 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1045 ** Deprecated options
1047 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1048 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1050 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1054 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1056 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1057 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1058 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1059 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1061 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1064 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1070 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1075 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1077 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1079 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1080 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1081 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1083 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1084 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1085 problematic usages. These include:
1087 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1088 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1089 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1090 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1091 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1092 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1093 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1094 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1095 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1097 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1098 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1100 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1101 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1102 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1103 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1105 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1106 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1107 between binary and text files.
1109 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1113 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1117 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1118 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1120 head tac tail tee tr
1121 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1123 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1124 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1126 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1127 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1128 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1130 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1132 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1134 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1135 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1136 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1140 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1142 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1143 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1145 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1146 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1147 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1151 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1152 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1156 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1157 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1158 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1162 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1163 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1167 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1169 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1171 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1175 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1176 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1177 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1179 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1180 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1181 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1182 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1183 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1185 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1189 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1190 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1191 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1193 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1195 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1196 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1197 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1198 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1200 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1202 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1203 rather than silently wrapping around.
1205 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1206 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1208 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1209 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1211 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1212 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1213 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1214 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1216 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1218 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1220 ** Improved robustness
1222 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1223 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1224 no matter how large the result.
1226 ** Improved portability
1228 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1229 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1231 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1233 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1234 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1235 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1237 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1238 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1242 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1243 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1245 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1247 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1248 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1249 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1250 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1252 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1253 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1255 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1256 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1257 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1259 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1261 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1262 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1264 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1265 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1267 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1269 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1270 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1272 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1273 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1275 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1276 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1277 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1279 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1281 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1283 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1287 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1289 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1290 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1291 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1293 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1294 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1296 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1297 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1298 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1300 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1301 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1303 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1304 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1305 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1306 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1308 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1309 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1311 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1312 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1313 the file system does not support it.
1315 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1317 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1318 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1320 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1322 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1323 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1325 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1326 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1327 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1328 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1330 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1331 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1334 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1335 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1336 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1337 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1339 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1340 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1341 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1342 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1344 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1345 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1347 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1349 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1350 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1351 reporting incorrect results.
1355 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1356 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1358 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1361 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1363 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1364 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1366 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1367 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1369 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1372 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1373 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1374 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1375 the file name does not look like a page range.
1377 printf has several changes:
1379 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1380 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1382 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1383 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1384 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1386 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1387 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1390 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1391 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1393 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1394 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1396 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1398 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1399 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1401 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1403 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1405 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1406 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1407 when first encountering the directory.
1411 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1412 output; POSIX requires this.
1414 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1415 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1417 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1419 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1420 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1422 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1423 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1425 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1426 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1427 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1428 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1429 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1430 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1431 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1433 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1434 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1435 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1437 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1438 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1440 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1442 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1444 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1445 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1446 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1447 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1449 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1453 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1454 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1455 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1456 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1457 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1459 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1460 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1461 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1463 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1464 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1466 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1467 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1469 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1470 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1471 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1472 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1473 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1475 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1476 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1478 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1479 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1481 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1483 nocreat do not create the output file
1484 excl fail if the output file already exists
1485 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1486 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1488 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1490 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1491 direct use direct I/O for data
1492 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1493 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1494 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1495 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1496 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1498 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1500 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1501 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1504 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1505 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1506 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1507 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1508 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1509 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1511 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1512 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1514 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1517 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1519 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1521 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1522 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1524 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1525 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1526 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1528 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1529 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1530 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1532 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1534 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1535 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1537 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1538 for compatibility with bash.
1540 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1542 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1543 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1544 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1545 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1547 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1548 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1550 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1551 ls supports TABSIZE.
1552 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1553 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1554 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1556 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1559 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1561 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1562 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1563 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1564 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1565 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1566 an offset, not as a file name.
1568 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1569 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1571 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1572 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1574 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1575 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1577 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1578 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1579 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1581 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1582 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1584 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1585 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1589 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1591 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1593 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1597 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1598 or more arguments between partitions.
1600 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1601 holes in the destination.
1603 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1604 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1605 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1606 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1607 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1608 terminates immediately.
1610 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1612 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1614 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1615 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1616 not the empty string.
1618 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1619 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1623 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1624 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1625 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1628 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1635 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1639 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1640 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1642 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1643 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1645 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1646 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1647 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1650 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1654 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1655 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1657 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1658 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1660 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1661 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1662 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1664 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1666 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1669 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1671 ** Configuration option
1673 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1674 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1678 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1679 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1683 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1684 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1685 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1688 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1689 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1690 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1691 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1692 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1693 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1694 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1697 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1701 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1702 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1703 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1705 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1706 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1708 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1710 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1711 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1712 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1713 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1715 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1717 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1718 not just the ones that reference directories
1720 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1721 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1723 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1724 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1725 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1727 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1728 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1729 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1730 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1731 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1732 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1734 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1739 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1740 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1742 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1744 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1746 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1748 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1749 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1751 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1752 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1754 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1756 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1760 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1762 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1764 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1765 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1766 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1767 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1768 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1770 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1771 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1773 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1774 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1776 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1777 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1779 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1780 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1781 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1785 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1786 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1787 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1788 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1789 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1790 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1791 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1792 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1793 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1794 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1795 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1796 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1797 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1798 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1800 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1802 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1803 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1805 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1807 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1809 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1810 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1812 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1814 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1815 without a trailing newline.
1817 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1818 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1820 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1823 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1827 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1829 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1831 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1832 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1833 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1834 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1836 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1838 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1839 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1840 be printed without leading spaces.
1842 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1843 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1848 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1849 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1850 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1852 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1854 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1855 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1857 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1858 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1860 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1861 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1863 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1865 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1867 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1869 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1870 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1872 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1874 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1876 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1877 byte offsets are specified.
1880 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1883 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1886 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1887 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1888 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1889 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1890 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1891 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1892 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1893 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1894 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1895 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1896 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1897 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1898 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1899 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1900 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1901 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1902 directory where M has write access.
1903 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1904 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1905 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1908 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1909 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1910 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1911 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1912 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1913 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1914 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1915 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1916 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1917 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1918 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1919 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1920 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1921 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1922 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1923 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1924 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1925 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1926 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1927 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1928 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1929 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1930 appeared one additional time.
1932 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1933 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1934 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1935 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1938 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1939 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1940 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1941 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1942 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1943 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1944 if there were more than 338.
1946 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1947 - false --help now exits nonzero
1950 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1951 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1952 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1953 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1956 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1957 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1958 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1959 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1960 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1963 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1964 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1965 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1966 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1967 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1968 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1969 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1972 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1973 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1974 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1975 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1976 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1977 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1979 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1980 under certain unusual conditions
1981 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1982 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1985 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1986 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1987 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1988 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1989 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1990 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1991 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1992 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1993 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1994 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1995 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1996 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1997 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1998 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1999 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2000 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2003 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2004 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2007 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2008 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2009 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2010 involving hard-linked directories
2011 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2012 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2013 character-special and block files
2016 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2017 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2018 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2019 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2020 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2021 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2022 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2023 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2024 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2026 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2027 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2028 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2029 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2030 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2031 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2032 specified on the command line.
2033 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2034 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2035 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2036 the first file untouched.
2037 * readlink: new program
2038 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2039 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2040 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2041 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2042 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2043 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2046 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2047 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2048 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2049 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2050 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2051 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2052 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2053 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2054 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2055 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2056 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2057 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2059 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2060 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2061 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2063 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2064 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2065 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2066 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2067 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2068 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2069 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2070 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2073 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2074 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2077 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2078 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2079 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2080 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2081 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2082 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2083 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2086 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2087 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2089 ========================================================================
2090 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2091 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2094 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2096 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2097 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2098 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2099 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2100 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2101 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2102 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2103 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2104 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2105 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2106 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2107 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2109 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2110 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2111 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2112 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2114 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2117 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2119 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2120 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2121 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2122 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2123 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2124 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2125 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2128 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2129 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2130 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2131 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2132 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2133 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2134 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2135 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2136 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2137 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2138 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2139 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2140 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2141 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2142 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2143 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2145 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2146 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2148 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2149 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2150 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2151 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2152 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2153 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2155 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2156 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2157 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2158 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2159 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2160 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2161 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2163 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2164 the source files in the following example:
2165 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2166 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2167 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2168 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2169 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2170 links between source files with --preserve=links
2171 * cp accepts new options:
2172 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2173 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2174 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2175 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2176 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2177 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2178 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2179 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2180 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2182 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2183 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2184 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2185 even though it's older than dest.
2186 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2187 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2188 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2189 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2190 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2192 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2193 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2194 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2195 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2196 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2197 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2198 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2200 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2201 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2202 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2204 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2205 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2206 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2207 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2208 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2209 This is the default.
2211 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2212 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2213 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2214 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2215 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2217 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2220 ========================================================================
2221 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2222 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2225 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2226 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2228 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2229 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2230 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2231 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2232 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2234 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2235 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2236 that specifies a non-directory
2239 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2240 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2241 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2242 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2243 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2244 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2245 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2246 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2247 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2248 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2249 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2250 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2251 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2252 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2253 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2254 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2255 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2256 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2257 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2258 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2259 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2260 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2261 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2262 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2264 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2265 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2266 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2268 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2270 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2271 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2273 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2274 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2275 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2276 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2277 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2279 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2280 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2281 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2282 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2283 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2285 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2287 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2288 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2289 * still more portability fixes
2290 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2291 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2293 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2295 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2297 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2299 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2300 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2301 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2302 there is any time remaining
2303 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2305 ========================================================================
2306 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2307 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2309 This package began as the union of the following:
2310 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2312 ========================================================================
2314 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2317 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2318 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2319 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2320 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2321 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2322 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.