1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
12 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
14 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
15 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
18 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
22 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
23 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
24 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
25 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
27 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
28 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
29 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
30 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
31 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
36 make check: two tests have been corrected
40 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
41 inherited from gnulib.
44 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
48 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
49 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
50 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
51 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
53 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
54 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
56 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
58 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
59 systems without xattr support.
61 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
62 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
63 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
65 ** Changes in behavior
67 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
68 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
69 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
70 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
72 ** Improved robustness
74 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
75 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
76 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
77 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
78 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
79 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
80 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
82 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
86 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
87 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
89 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
90 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
91 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
92 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
93 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
96 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
100 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
101 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
102 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
106 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
107 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
108 data was read, or on process exit.
109 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
111 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
112 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
113 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
114 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
116 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
117 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
118 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
119 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
121 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
122 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
124 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
125 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
127 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
128 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
129 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
131 ** Changes in behavior
133 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
134 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
135 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
137 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
138 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
140 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
141 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
142 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
145 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
149 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
151 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
152 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
153 install: Never copies xattrs
155 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
156 from overwriting any existing destination file
158 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
159 mode where this feature is available.
161 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
162 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
163 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
164 do not modify the destination at all.
166 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
168 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
172 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
173 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
175 cp uses much less memory in some situations
177 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
178 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
180 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
181 processing the first file name
183 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
184 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
185 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
186 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
188 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
189 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
191 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
192 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
195 ** Changes in behavior
197 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
198 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
200 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
201 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
202 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
204 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
205 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
207 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
209 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
210 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
211 is still marked with a '+'.
214 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
218 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
219 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
223 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
224 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
225 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
226 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
227 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
228 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
230 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
231 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
233 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
234 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
236 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
238 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
239 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
240 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
242 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
243 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
245 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
246 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
247 used to factor large numbers.
249 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
252 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
254 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
256 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
257 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
259 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
260 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
261 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
262 maximum command-line (argv) length.
264 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
265 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
266 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
268 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
269 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
273 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
275 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
276 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
278 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
279 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
281 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
283 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
284 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
288 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
289 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
290 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
292 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
294 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
295 no matter how many files are in a given directory
297 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
298 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
299 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
301 ** Changes in behavior
303 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
304 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
307 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
311 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
313 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
314 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
315 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
317 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
318 with no USERNAME argument.
320 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
321 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
322 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
324 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
325 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
326 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
327 number of fields for some inputs.
329 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
330 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
332 ** Changes in behavior
334 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
335 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
338 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
342 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
344 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
345 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
346 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
347 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
349 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
350 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
352 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
353 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
355 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
356 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
358 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
359 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
360 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
361 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
363 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
364 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
365 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
366 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
367 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
368 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
370 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
371 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
373 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
374 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
375 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
377 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
378 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
380 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
381 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
383 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
384 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
385 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
386 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
388 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
389 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
391 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
392 in more cases when a directory is empty.
394 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
395 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
396 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
400 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
401 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
403 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
404 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
405 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
406 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
410 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
411 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
413 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
415 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
419 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
420 which have negative errno values.
424 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
428 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
432 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
433 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
436 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
440 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
441 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
442 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
444 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
445 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
446 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
447 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
451 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
452 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
453 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
454 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
457 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
461 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
463 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
464 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
465 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
468 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
472 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
473 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
475 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
477 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
479 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
481 ** Programs no longer installed by default
485 ** Changes in behavior
487 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
488 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
490 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
491 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
493 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
494 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
495 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
499 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
500 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
501 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
502 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
503 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
504 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
505 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
506 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
507 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
508 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
509 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
511 The following commands and options now support the standard size
512 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
513 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
516 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
519 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
520 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
521 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
523 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
524 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
525 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
530 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
531 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
532 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
533 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
535 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
536 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
537 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
538 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
539 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
540 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
541 of "make check" fail.
543 ** Remove deprecated options
545 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
546 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
547 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
548 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
549 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
551 ** Improved robustness
553 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
554 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
555 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
556 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
557 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
558 loss of the contents of a/f.
560 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
561 in its 35-colon command-line argument
565 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
566 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
567 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
569 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
570 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
571 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
572 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
574 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
575 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
576 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
577 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
578 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
579 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
580 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
581 destination is a symlink.
583 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
585 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
586 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
588 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
589 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
591 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
593 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
594 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
596 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
597 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
599 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
602 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
603 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
605 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
606 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
608 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
609 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
610 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
611 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
613 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
614 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
615 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
617 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
618 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
619 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
621 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
622 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
623 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
624 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
626 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
627 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
628 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
630 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
631 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
633 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
634 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
636 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
638 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
639 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
640 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
642 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
643 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
645 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
646 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
648 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
649 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
651 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
652 [present in the original version]
655 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
659 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
661 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
662 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
663 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
665 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
666 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
668 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
672 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
673 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
675 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
676 support but with insufficient /proc support.
678 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
679 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
681 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
682 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
683 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
684 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
685 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
686 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
688 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
689 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
692 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
693 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
695 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
698 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
699 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
700 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
702 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
703 directory is unreadable.
705 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
706 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
707 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
709 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
710 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
711 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
712 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
713 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
716 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
717 Before it would print nothing.
719 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
721 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
722 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
723 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
724 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
725 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
726 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
727 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
728 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
730 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
734 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
735 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
736 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
738 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
739 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
740 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
741 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
744 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
748 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
749 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
750 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
751 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
752 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
753 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
754 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
756 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
757 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
758 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
759 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
760 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
761 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
762 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
763 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
765 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
766 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
767 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
770 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
774 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
775 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
777 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
778 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
779 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
781 ** Improved robustness
783 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
784 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
785 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
788 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
792 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
793 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
794 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
795 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
796 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
798 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
802 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
805 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
809 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
810 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
811 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
812 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
814 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
815 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
817 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
818 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
819 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
822 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
824 ** Improved robustness
826 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
827 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
829 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
830 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
831 or NFS-mounted partition.
833 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
834 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
838 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
839 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
840 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
841 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
842 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
843 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
845 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
846 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
848 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
849 or neglect to report file removal.
851 For the "groups" command:
853 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
854 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
856 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
858 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
860 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
864 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
865 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
868 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
870 ** Changes in behavior
872 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
873 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
874 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
875 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
877 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
878 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
879 a final `./' or `../' component.
881 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
882 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
885 ** Infrastructure changes
887 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
888 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
889 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
890 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
894 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
897 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
898 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
899 dirent.d_type support.
901 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
902 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
904 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
905 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
906 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
907 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
910 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
912 ** Changes in behavior
914 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
918 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
919 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
923 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
924 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
925 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
927 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
928 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
930 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
931 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
933 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
935 ** Improved robustness
937 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
938 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
939 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
941 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
942 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
945 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
946 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
948 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
949 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
951 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
952 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
954 ** Changes in behavior
956 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
957 where the two are distinct.
959 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
960 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
961 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
962 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
963 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
964 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
965 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
966 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
967 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
968 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
969 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
970 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
971 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
972 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
973 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
974 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
975 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
977 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
978 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
979 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
981 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
982 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
983 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
984 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
987 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
988 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
992 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
993 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
994 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
995 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
997 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
998 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
999 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1001 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1002 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1003 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1004 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1005 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1008 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1009 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1011 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1012 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1013 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1014 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1016 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1017 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1018 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1020 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1021 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1022 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1023 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1025 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1026 and sticky) with the -m option.
1028 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1029 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1030 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1031 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1032 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1034 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1035 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1037 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1041 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1042 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1043 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1044 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1046 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1048 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1050 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1051 silently ignoring one of them.
1053 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1054 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1055 containing this change was 5.92.
1057 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1058 automatically newline terminated.
1060 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1061 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1062 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1063 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1066 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1067 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1068 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1071 ** Scheduled for removal
1073 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1074 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1076 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1077 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1078 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1079 command to unlink a directory.
1081 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1082 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1083 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1084 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1088 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1089 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1090 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1091 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1092 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1093 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1097 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1098 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1100 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1102 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1103 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1104 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1106 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1107 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1110 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1111 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1113 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1114 list directories before files.
1116 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1117 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1118 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1119 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1122 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1124 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1126 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1127 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1128 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1130 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1131 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1135 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1136 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1137 usually printing nothing.
1139 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1141 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1142 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1143 them with hard-linked directories.
1145 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1146 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1147 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1149 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1150 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1151 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1153 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1156 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1157 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1159 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1160 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1162 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1163 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1165 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1166 all command-line arguments.
1168 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1170 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1172 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1173 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1175 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1177 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1178 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1179 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1180 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1181 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1183 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1184 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1186 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1187 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1188 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1189 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1191 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1193 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1197 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1198 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1200 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1201 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1203 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1204 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1206 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1207 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1209 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1210 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1212 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1214 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1215 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1216 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1219 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1221 ** Build-related bug fixes
1223 installing .mo files would fail
1226 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1230 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1232 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1235 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1239 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1240 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1244 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1246 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1247 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1249 ** Deprecated options
1251 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1252 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1254 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1258 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1260 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1261 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1262 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1263 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1265 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1268 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1274 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1279 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1281 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1283 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1284 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1285 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1287 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1288 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1289 problematic usages. These include:
1291 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1292 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1293 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1294 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1295 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1296 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1297 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1298 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1299 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1301 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1302 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1304 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1305 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1306 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1307 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1309 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1310 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1311 between binary and text files.
1313 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1317 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1321 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1322 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1324 head tac tail tee tr
1325 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1327 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1328 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1330 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1331 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1332 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1334 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1336 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1338 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1339 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1340 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1344 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1346 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1347 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1349 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1350 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1351 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1355 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1356 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1360 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1361 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1362 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1366 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1367 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1371 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1373 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1375 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1379 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1380 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1381 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1383 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1384 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1385 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1386 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1387 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1389 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1393 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1394 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1395 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1397 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1399 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1400 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1401 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1402 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1404 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1406 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1407 rather than silently wrapping around.
1409 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1410 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1412 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1413 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1415 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1416 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1417 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1418 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1420 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1422 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1424 ** Improved robustness
1426 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1427 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1428 no matter how large the result.
1430 ** Improved portability
1432 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1433 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1435 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1437 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1438 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1439 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1441 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1442 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1446 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1447 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1449 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1451 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1452 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1453 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1454 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1456 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1457 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1459 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1460 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1461 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1463 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1465 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1466 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1468 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1469 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1471 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1473 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1474 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1476 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1477 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1479 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1480 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1481 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1483 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1485 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1487 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1491 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1493 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1494 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1495 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1497 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1498 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1500 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1501 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1502 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1504 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1505 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1507 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1508 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1509 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1510 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1512 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1513 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1515 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1516 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1517 the file system does not support it.
1519 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1521 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1522 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1524 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1526 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1527 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1529 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1530 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1531 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1532 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1534 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1535 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1538 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1539 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1540 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1541 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1543 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1544 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1545 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1546 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1548 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1549 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1551 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1553 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1554 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1555 reporting incorrect results.
1559 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1560 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1562 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1565 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1567 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1568 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1570 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1571 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1573 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1576 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1577 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1578 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1579 the file name does not look like a page range.
1581 printf has several changes:
1583 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1584 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1586 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1587 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1588 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1590 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1591 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1594 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1595 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1597 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1598 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1600 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1602 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1603 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1605 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1607 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1609 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1610 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1611 when first encountering the directory.
1615 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1616 output; POSIX requires this.
1618 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1619 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1621 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1623 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1624 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1626 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1627 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1629 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1630 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1631 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1632 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1633 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1634 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1635 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1637 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1638 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1639 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1641 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1642 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1644 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1646 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1648 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1649 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1650 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1651 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1653 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1657 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1658 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1659 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1660 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1661 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1663 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1664 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1665 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1667 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1668 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1670 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1671 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1673 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1674 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1675 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1676 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1677 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1679 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1680 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1682 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1683 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1685 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1687 nocreat do not create the output file
1688 excl fail if the output file already exists
1689 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1690 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1692 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1694 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1695 direct use direct I/O for data
1696 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1697 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1698 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1699 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1700 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1702 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1704 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1705 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1708 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1709 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1710 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1711 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1712 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1713 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1715 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1716 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1718 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1721 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1723 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1725 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1726 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1728 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1729 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1730 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1732 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1733 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1734 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1736 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1738 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1739 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1741 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1742 for compatibility with bash.
1744 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1746 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1747 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1748 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1749 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1751 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1752 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1754 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1755 ls supports TABSIZE.
1756 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1757 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1758 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1760 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1763 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1765 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1766 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1767 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1768 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1769 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1770 an offset, not as a file name.
1772 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1773 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1775 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1776 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1778 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1779 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1781 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1782 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1783 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1785 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1786 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1788 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1789 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1793 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1795 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1797 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1801 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1802 or more arguments between partitions.
1804 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1805 holes in the destination.
1807 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1808 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1809 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1810 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1811 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1812 terminates immediately.
1814 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1816 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1818 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1819 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1820 not the empty string.
1822 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1823 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1827 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1828 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1829 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1832 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1839 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1843 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1844 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1846 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1847 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1849 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1850 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1851 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1854 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1858 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1859 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1861 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1862 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1864 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1865 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1866 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1868 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1870 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1873 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1875 ** Configuration option
1877 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1878 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1882 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1883 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1887 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1888 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1889 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1892 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1893 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1894 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1895 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1896 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1897 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1898 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1901 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1905 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1906 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1907 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1909 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1910 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1912 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1914 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1915 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1916 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1917 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1919 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1921 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1922 not just the ones that reference directories
1924 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1925 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1927 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1928 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1929 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1931 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1932 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1933 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1934 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1935 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1936 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1938 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1943 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1944 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1946 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1948 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1950 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1952 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1953 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1955 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1956 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1958 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1960 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1964 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1966 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1968 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1969 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1970 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1971 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1972 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1974 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1975 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1977 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1978 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1980 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1981 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1983 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1984 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1985 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1989 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1990 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1991 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1992 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1993 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1994 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1995 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1996 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1997 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1998 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1999 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2000 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2001 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2002 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2004 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2006 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2007 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2009 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2011 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2013 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2014 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2016 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2018 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2019 without a trailing newline.
2021 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2022 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2024 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2027 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2031 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2033 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2035 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2036 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2037 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2038 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2040 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2042 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2043 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2044 be printed without leading spaces.
2046 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2047 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2052 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2053 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2054 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2056 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2058 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2059 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2061 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2062 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2064 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2065 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2067 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2069 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2071 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2073 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2074 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2076 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2078 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2080 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2081 byte offsets are specified.
2084 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2087 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2090 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2091 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2092 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2093 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2094 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2095 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2096 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2097 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2098 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2099 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2100 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2101 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2102 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2103 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2104 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2105 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2106 directory where M has write access.
2107 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2108 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2109 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2112 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2113 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2114 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2115 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2116 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2117 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2118 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2119 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2120 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2121 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2122 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2123 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2124 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2125 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2126 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2127 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2128 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2129 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2130 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2131 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2132 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2133 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2134 appeared one additional time.
2136 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2137 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2138 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2139 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2142 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2143 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2144 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2145 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2146 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2147 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2148 if there were more than 338.
2150 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2151 - false --help now exits nonzero
2154 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2155 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2156 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2157 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2160 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2161 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2162 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2163 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2164 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2167 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2168 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2169 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2170 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2171 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2172 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2173 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2176 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2177 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2178 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2179 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2180 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2181 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2183 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2184 under certain unusual conditions
2185 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2186 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2189 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2190 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2191 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2192 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2193 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2194 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2195 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2196 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2197 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2198 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2199 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2200 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2201 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2202 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2203 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2204 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2207 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2208 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2211 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2212 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2213 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2214 involving hard-linked directories
2215 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2216 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2217 character-special and block files
2220 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2221 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2222 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2223 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2224 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2225 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2226 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2227 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2228 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2230 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2231 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2232 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2233 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2234 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2235 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2236 specified on the command line.
2237 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2238 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2239 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2240 the first file untouched.
2241 * readlink: new program
2242 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2243 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2244 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2245 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2246 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2247 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2250 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2251 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2252 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2253 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2254 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2255 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2256 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2257 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2258 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2259 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2260 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2261 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2263 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2264 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2265 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2267 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2268 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2269 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2270 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2271 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2272 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2273 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2274 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2277 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2278 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2281 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2282 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2283 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2284 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2285 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2286 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2287 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2290 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2291 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2293 ========================================================================
2294 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2295 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2298 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2300 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2301 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2302 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2303 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2304 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2305 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2306 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2307 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2308 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2309 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2310 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2311 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2313 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2314 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2315 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2316 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2318 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2321 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2323 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2324 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2325 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2326 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2327 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2328 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2329 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2332 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2333 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2334 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2335 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2336 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2337 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2338 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2339 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2340 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2341 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2342 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2343 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2344 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2345 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2346 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2347 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2349 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2350 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2352 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2353 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2354 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2355 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2356 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2357 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2359 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2360 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2361 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2362 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2363 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2364 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2365 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2367 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2368 the source files in the following example:
2369 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2370 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2371 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2372 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2373 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2374 links between source files with --preserve=links
2375 * cp accepts new options:
2376 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2377 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2378 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2379 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2380 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2381 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2382 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2383 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2384 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2386 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2387 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2388 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2389 even though it's older than dest.
2390 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2391 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2392 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2393 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2394 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2396 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2397 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2398 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2399 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2400 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2401 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2402 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2404 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2405 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2406 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2408 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2409 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2410 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2411 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2412 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2413 This is the default.
2415 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2416 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2417 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2418 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2419 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2421 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2424 ========================================================================
2425 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2426 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2429 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2430 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2432 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2433 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2434 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2435 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2436 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2438 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2439 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2440 that specifies a non-directory
2443 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2444 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2445 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2446 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2447 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2448 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2449 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2450 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2451 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2452 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2453 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2454 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2455 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2456 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2457 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2458 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2459 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2460 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2461 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2462 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2463 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2464 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2465 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2466 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2468 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2469 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2470 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2472 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2474 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2475 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2477 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2478 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2479 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2480 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2481 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2483 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2484 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2485 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2486 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2487 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2489 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2491 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2492 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2493 * still more portability fixes
2494 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2495 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2497 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2499 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2501 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2503 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2504 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2505 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2506 there is any time remaining
2507 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2509 ========================================================================
2510 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2511 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2513 This package began as the union of the following:
2514 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2516 ========================================================================
2518 Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2520 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2521 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2522 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2523 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2524 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2525 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.