1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 install now removes the target file if the strip program failed for any
8 reason. Before, that file was left behind, sometimes even with wrong
10 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
12 ln --relative now updates existing symlinks correctly. Previously it based
13 the relative link on the dereferenced path of an existing link.
14 [This bug was introduced when --relative was added in coreutils-8.16.]
16 mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod now work better when creating a file in a directory
17 with a default ACL whose umask disagrees with the process's umask, on a
18 system such as GNU/Linux where directory ACL umasks override process umasks.
19 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
21 od -wN with N larger than 64K on a system with 32-bit size_t would
22 print approximately 2*N bytes of extraneous padding.
23 [Bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
25 tail --retry -f now waits for the files specified to appear. Before, tail
26 would immediately exit when such a file is inaccessible during the initial
28 [This bug was introduced when inotify support was added in coreutils-7.5]
32 ls -Z and id -Z report the SMACK security context where available.
34 join accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort,uniq
35 option of the same name, this makes join consume and produce NUL-terminated
36 lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
38 uniq accepts a new option: --group to print all items, while separating
39 unique groups with empty lines.
41 csplit accepts a new option: --suppressed-matched, to elide the lines
42 used to identify the split points.
44 ** Changes in behavior
46 stdbuf now requires at least one buffering mode option to be specified,
47 as per the documented interface.
51 stat and tail work better with EFIVARFS, EXOFS, F2FS, SNFS and UBIFS.
52 stat -f --format=%T now reports the file system type, and tail -f now uses
53 inotify for files on those file systems, rather than the default (for unknown
54 file system types) of issuing a warning and reverting to polling.
56 shuf outputs subsets of large inputs much more efficiently.
57 Reservoir sampling is used to limit memory usage based on the number of
58 outputs, rather than the number of inputs.
60 split --line-bytes=SIZE, now only allocates memory as needed rather
61 than allocating SIZE bytes at program start.
65 factor now builds on aarch64 based systems [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20]
68 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.21 (2013-02-14) [stable]
72 numfmt: reformat numbers
76 df now accepts the --output[=FIELD_LIST] option to define the list of columns
77 to include in the output, or all available columns if the FIELD_LIST is
78 omitted. Note this enables df to output both block and inode fields together.
80 du now accepts the --threshold=SIZE option to restrict the output to entries
81 with such a minimum SIZE (or a maximum SIZE if it is negative).
82 du recognizes -t SIZE as equivalent, for compatibility with FreeBSD.
86 cp --no-preserve=mode now no longer exits non-zero.
87 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20]
89 cut with a range like "N-" no longer allocates N/8 bytes. That buffer
90 would never be used, and allocation failure could cause cut to fail.
91 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
93 cut no longer accepts the invalid range 0-, which made it print empty lines.
94 Instead, cut now fails and emits an appropriate diagnostic.
95 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
97 cut now handles overlapping to-EOL ranges properly. Before, it would
98 interpret "-b2-,3-" like "-b3-". Now it's treated like "-b2-".
99 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
101 cut no longer prints extraneous delimiters when a to-EOL range subsumes
102 another range. Before, "echo 123|cut --output-delim=: -b2-,3" would print
103 "2:3". Now it prints "23". [bug introduced in 5.3.0]
105 cut -f no longer inspects input line N+1 before fully outputting line N,
106 which avoids delayed output for intermittent input.
107 [bug introduced in TEXTUTILS-1_8b]
109 factor no longer loops infinitely on 32 bit powerpc or sparc systems.
110 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20]
112 install -m M SOURCE DEST no longer has a race condition where DEST's
113 permissions are temporarily derived from SOURCE instead of from M.
115 pr -n no longer crashes when passed values >= 32. Also, line numbers are
116 consistently padded with spaces, rather than with zeros for certain widths.
117 [bug introduced in TEXTUTILS-1_22i]
119 seq -w ensures that for numbers input in scientific notation,
120 the output numbers are properly aligned and of the correct width.
121 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
123 seq -w ensures correct alignment when the step value includes a precision
124 while the start value does not, and the number sequence narrows.
125 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
127 seq -s no longer prints an erroneous newline after the first number, and
128 outputs a newline after the last number rather than a trailing separator.
129 Also seq no longer ignores a specified step value when the end value is 1.
130 [bugs introduced in coreutils-8.20]
132 timeout now ensures that blocking of ALRM signals is not inherited from
133 its parent, which would cause timeouts to be ignored.
134 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
136 ** Changes in behavior
138 df --total now prints '-' into the target column (mount point) of the
139 summary line, accommodating the --output option where the target field
140 can be in any column. If there is no source column, then df prints
141 'total' in the target column.
143 df now properly outputs file system information with bind mounts present on
144 the system by skipping duplicate entries (identified by the device number).
145 Consequently, df also elides the early-boot pseudo file system type "rootfs".
147 nl no longer supports the --page-increment option, which has been
148 deprecated since coreutils-7.5. Use --line-increment instead.
152 readlink now supports multiple arguments, and a complementary
153 -z, --zero option to delimit output items with the NUL character.
155 stat and tail now know about CEPH. stat -f --format=%T now reports the file
156 system type, and tail -f uses polling for files on CEPH file systems.
158 stty now supports configuring DTR/DSR hardware flow control where available.
162 Perl is now more of a prerequisite. It has long been required in order
163 to run (not skip) a significant percentage of the tests. Now, it is
164 also required in order to generate proper man pages, via help2man. The
165 generated man/*.1 man pages are no longer distributed. Building without
166 perl, you would create stub man pages. Thus, while perl is not an
167 official prerequisite (build and "make check" will still succeed), any
168 resulting man pages would be inferior. In addition, this fixes a bug
169 in distributed (not from clone) Makefile.in that could cause parallel
170 build failure when building from modified sources, as is common practice
171 for a patched distribution package.
173 factor now builds on x86_64 with x32 ABI, 32 bit MIPS, and all HPPA systems,
174 by avoiding incompatible asm. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20]
176 A root-only test predicate would always fail. Its job was to determine
177 whether our dummy user, $NON_ROOT_USERNAME, was able to run binaries from
178 the build directory. As a result, all dependent tests were always skipped.
179 Now, those tests may be run once again. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20]
182 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.20 (2012-10-23) [stable]
186 dd now accepts 'status=none' to suppress all informational output.
188 md5sum now accepts the --tag option to print BSD-style output with GNU
189 file name escaping. This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha256sum,
190 sha384sum and sha512sum.
194 cp could read from freed memory and could even make corrupt copies.
195 This could happen with a very fragmented and sparse input file,
196 on GNU/Linux file systems supporting fiemap extent scanning.
197 This bug also affects mv when it resorts to copying, and install.
198 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.11]
200 cp --no-preserve=mode now no longer preserves the original file's
201 permissions but correctly sets mode specified by 0666 & ~umask
203 du no longer emits a "disk-corrupted"-style diagnostic when it detects
204 a directory cycle that is due to a bind-mounted directory. Instead,
205 it detects this precise type of cycle, diagnoses it as such and
206 eventually exits nonzero.
208 factor (when using gmp) would mistakenly declare some composite numbers
209 to be prime, e.g., 465658903, 2242724851, 6635692801 and many more.
210 The fix makes factor somewhat slower (~25%) for ranges of consecutive
211 numbers, and up to 8 times slower for some worst-case individual numbers.
212 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0, with GNU MP support]
214 ls now correctly colors dangling symlinks when listing their containing
215 directories, with orphaned symlink coloring disabled in LS_COLORS.
216 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.14]
218 rm -i -d now prompts the user then removes an empty directory, rather
219 than ignoring the -d option and failing with an 'Is a directory' error.
220 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.19, with the addition of --dir (-d)]
222 rm -r S/ (where S is a symlink-to-directory) no longer gives the invalid
223 "Too many levels of symbolic links" diagnostic.
224 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
226 seq now handles arbitrarily long non-negative whole numbers when the
227 increment is 1 and when no format-changing option is specified.
228 Before, this would infloop:
229 b=100000000000000000000; seq $b $b
230 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
232 ** Changes in behavior
234 nproc now diagnoses with an error, non option command line parameters.
238 factor's core has been rewritten for speed and increased range.
239 It can now factor numbers up to 2^128, even without GMP support.
240 Its speed is from a few times better (for small numbers) to over
241 10,000 times better (just below 2^64). The new code also runs a
242 deterministic primality test for each prime factor, not just a
245 seq is now up to 70 times faster than it was in coreutils-8.19 and prior,
246 but only with non-negative whole numbers, an increment of 1, and no
247 format-changing options.
249 stat and tail know about ZFS, VZFS and VMHGFS. stat -f --format=%T now
250 reports the file system type, and tail -f now uses inotify for files on
251 ZFS and VZFS file systems, rather than the default (for unknown file
252 system types) of issuing a warning and reverting to polling. tail -f
253 still uses polling for files on VMHGFS file systems.
257 root-only tests now check for permissions of our dummy user,
258 $NON_ROOT_USERNAME, before trying to run binaries from the build directory.
259 Before, we would get hard-to-diagnose reports of failing root-only tests.
260 Now, those tests are skipped with a useful diagnostic when the root tests
261 are run without following the instructions in README.
263 We now build most directories using non-recursive make rules. I.e.,
264 rather than running make in man/, lib/, src/, tests/, instead, the top
265 level Makefile.am includes a $dir/local.mk that describes how to build
266 the targets in the corresponding directory. Two directories remain
267 unconverted: po/, gnulib-tests/. One nice side-effect is that the more
268 accurate dependencies have eliminated a nagging occasional failure that
269 was seen when running parallel "make syntax-check".
272 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.19 (2012-08-20) [stable]
276 df now fails when the list of mounted file systems (/etc/mtab) cannot
277 be read, yet the file system type information is needed to process
278 certain options like -a, -l, -t and -x.
279 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
281 sort -u could fail to output one or more result lines.
282 For example, this command would fail to print "1":
283 (yes 7 | head -11; echo 1) | sort --p=1 -S32b -u
284 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
286 sort -u could read freed memory.
287 For example, this evokes a read from freed memory:
288 perl -le 'print "a\n"."0"x900'|valgrind sort --p=1 -S32b -u>/dev/null
289 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
293 rm now accepts the --dir (-d) option which makes it remove empty directories.
294 Since removing empty directories is relatively safe, this option can be
295 used as a part of the alias rm='rm --dir'. This improves compatibility
296 with Mac OS X and BSD systems which also honor the -d option.
299 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.18 (2012-08-12) [stable]
303 cksum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
304 processes will not intersperse their output.
305 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
307 date -d "$(printf '\xb0')" would print 00:00:00 with today's date
308 rather than diagnosing the invalid input. Now it reports this:
309 date: invalid date '\260'
310 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
312 df no longer outputs control characters present in the mount point name.
313 Such characters are replaced with '?', so for example, scripts consuming
314 lines output by df, can work reliably.
315 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
317 df --total now exits with an appropriate diagnostic and error code, when
318 file system --type options do not lead to a processed file system.
319 [This bug dates back to when --total was added in coreutils-7.0]
321 head --lines=-N (-n-N) now resets the read pointer of a seekable input file.
322 This means that "head -n-3" no longer consumes all of its input, and lines
323 not output by head may be processed by other programs. For example, this
324 command now prints the final line, 2, while before it would print nothing:
325 seq 2 > k; (head -n-1 > /dev/null; cat) < k
326 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
328 ls --color would mis-color relative-named symlinks in /
329 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.17]
331 split now ensures it doesn't overwrite the input file with generated output.
332 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
334 stat and df now report the correct file system usage,
335 in all situations on GNU/Linux, by correctly determining the block size.
336 [df bug since coreutils-5.0.91, stat bug since the initial implementation]
338 tail -f no longer tries to use inotify on AUFS or PanFS file systems
339 [you might say this was introduced in coreutils-7.5, along with inotify
340 support, but even now, its magic number isn't in the usual place.]
344 stat -f recognizes the new remote file system types: aufs, panfs.
346 ** Changes in behavior
348 su: this program has been removed. We stopped installing "su" by
349 default with the release of coreutils-6.9.90 on 2007-12-01. Now,
350 that the util-linux package has the union of the Suse and Fedora
351 patches as well as enough support to build on the Hurd, we no longer
352 have any reason to include it here.
356 sort avoids redundant processing in the presence of inaccessible inputs,
357 or unwritable output. Sort now diagnoses certain errors at start-up,
358 rather than after potentially expensive processing.
360 sort now allocates no more than 75% of physical memory by default,
361 to better share system resources, and thus operate more efficiently.
362 [The default max memory usage changed from 50% to 100% in coreutils-8.16]
365 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.17 (2012-05-10) [stable]
369 id and groups, when invoked with no user name argument, would print
370 the default group ID listed in the password database, and sometimes
371 that ID would be neither real nor effective. For example, when run
372 set-GID, or in a session for which the default group has just been
373 changed, the new group ID would be listed, even though it is not
374 yet effective. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
376 cp S D is no longer subject to a race: if an existing D were removed
377 between the initial stat and subsequent open-without-O_CREATE, cp would
378 fail with a confusing diagnostic saying that the destination, D, was not
379 found. Now, in this unusual case, it retries the open (but with O_CREATE),
380 and hence usually succeeds. With NFS attribute caching, the condition
381 was particularly easy to trigger, since there, the removal of D could
382 precede the initial stat. [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
384 split --number=C /dev/null no longer appears to infloop on GNU/Hurd
385 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
387 stat no longer reports a negative file size as a huge positive number.
388 [bug present since 'stat' was introduced in fileutils-4.1.9]
392 split and truncate now allow any seekable files in situations where
393 the file size is needed, instead of insisting on regular files.
395 fmt now accepts the --goal=WIDTH (-g) option.
397 stat -f recognizes new file system types: bdevfs, inodefs, qnx6
399 ** Changes in behavior
401 cp,mv,install,cat,split: now read and write a minimum of 64KiB at a time.
402 This was previously 32KiB and increasing to 64KiB was seen to increase
403 throughput by about 10% when reading cached files on 64 bit GNU/Linux.
405 cp --attributes-only no longer truncates any existing destination file,
406 allowing for more general copying of attributes from one file to another.
409 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.16 (2012-03-26) [stable]
413 As a GNU extension, 'chmod', 'mkdir', and 'install' now accept operators
414 '-', '+', '=' followed by octal modes; for example, 'chmod +40 FOO' enables
415 and 'chmod -40 FOO' disables FOO's group-read permissions. Operator
416 numeric modes can be combined with symbolic modes by separating them with
417 commas; for example, =0,u+r clears all permissions except for enabling
418 user-read permissions. Unlike ordinary numeric modes, operator numeric
419 modes do not preserve directory setuid and setgid bits; for example,
420 'chmod =0 FOO' clears all of FOO's permissions, including setuid and setgid.
422 Also, ordinary numeric modes with five or more digits no longer preserve
423 setuid and setgid bits, so that 'chmod 00755 FOO' now clears FOO's setuid
424 and setgid bits. This allows scripts to be portable to other systems which
425 lack the GNU extension mentioned previously, and where ordinary numeric
426 modes do not preserve directory setuid and setgid bits.
428 dd now accepts the count_bytes, skip_bytes iflags and the seek_bytes
429 oflag, to more easily allow processing portions of a file.
431 dd now accepts the conv=sparse flag to attempt to create sparse
432 output, by seeking rather than writing to the output file.
434 ln now accepts the --relative option, to generate a relative
435 symbolic link to a target, irrespective of how the target is specified.
437 split now accepts an optional "from" argument to --numeric-suffixes,
438 which changes the start number from the default of 0.
440 split now accepts the --additional-suffix option, to append an
441 additional static suffix to output file names.
443 basename now supports the -a and -s options, which allow processing
444 of more than one argument at a time. Also the complementary
445 -z option was added to delimit output items with the NUL character.
447 dirname now supports more than one argument. Also the complementary
448 -z option was added to delimit output items with the NUL character.
452 du --one-file-system (-x) would ignore any non-directory specified on
453 the command line. For example, "touch f; du -x f" would print nothing.
454 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.15]
456 mv now lets you move a symlink onto a same-inode destination file that
457 has two or more hard links. Before, it would reject that, saying that
458 they are the same, implicitly warning you that the move would result in
459 data loss. In this unusual case, when not moving the symlink onto its
460 referent, there is no risk of data loss, since the symlink will
461 typically still point to one of the hard links.
463 "mv A B" could succeed, yet A would remain. This would happen only when
464 both A and B were hard links to the same symlink, and with a kernel for
465 which rename("A","B") does nothing and returns 0 (POSIX mandates this
466 surprising rename no-op behavior). Now, mv handles this case by skipping
467 the usually-useless rename and simply unlinking A.
469 realpath no longer mishandles a root directory. This was most
470 noticeable on platforms where // is a different directory than /,
471 but could also be observed with --relative-base=/ or
472 --relative-to=/. [bug since the beginning, in 8.15]
476 ls can be much more efficient, especially with large directories on file
477 systems for which getfilecon-, ACL-check- and XATTR-check-induced syscalls
478 fail with ENOTSUP or similar.
480 'realpath --relative-base=dir' in isolation now implies '--relative-to=dir'
481 instead of causing a usage failure.
483 split now supports an unlimited number of split files as default behavior.
486 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.15 (2012-01-06) [stable]
490 realpath: print resolved file names.
494 du -x no longer counts root directories of other file systems.
495 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
497 ls --color many-entry-directory was uninterruptible for too long
498 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.2.1]
500 ls's -k option no longer affects how ls -l outputs file sizes.
501 It now affects only the per-directory block counts written by -l,
502 and the sizes written by -s. This is for compatibility with BSD
503 and with POSIX 2008. Because -k is no longer equivalent to
504 --block-size=1KiB, a new long option --kibibyte stands for -k.
505 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.4]
507 ls -l would leak a little memory (security context string) for each
508 nonempty directory listed on the command line, when using SELinux.
509 [bug probably introduced in coreutils-6.10 with SELinux support]
511 rm -rf DIR would fail with "Device or resource busy" on Cygwin with NWFS
512 and NcFsd file systems. This did not affect Unix/Linux-based kernels.
513 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0, when rm began using fts]
515 split -n 1/2 FILE no longer fails when operating on a growing file, or
516 (on some systems) when operating on a non-regular file like /dev/zero.
517 It would report "/dev/zero: No such file or directory" even though
518 the file obviously exists. Same for -n l/2.
519 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8, with the addition of the -n option]
521 stat -f now recognizes the FhGFS and PipeFS file system types.
523 tac no longer fails to handle two or more non-seekable inputs
524 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
526 tail -f no longer tries to use inotify on GPFS or FhGFS file systems
527 [you might say this was introduced in coreutils-7.5, along with inotify
528 support, but the new magic numbers weren't in the usual places then.]
530 ** Changes in behavior
532 df avoids long UUID-including file system names in the default listing.
533 With recent enough kernel/tools, these long names would be used, pushing
534 second and subsequent columns far to the right. Now, when a long name
535 refers to a symlink, and no file systems are specified, df prints the
536 usually-short referent instead.
538 tail -f now uses polling (not inotify) when any of its file arguments
539 resides on a file system of unknown type. In addition, for each such
540 argument, tail -f prints a warning with the FS type magic number and a
541 request to report it to the bug-reporting address.
544 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.14 (2011-10-12) [stable]
548 ls --dereference no longer outputs erroneous "argetm" strings for
549 dangling symlinks when an 'ln=target' entry is in $LS_COLORS.
550 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
552 ls -lL symlink once again properly prints "+" when the referent has an ACL.
553 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.13]
555 sort -g no longer infloops for certain inputs containing NaNs
556 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
560 md5sum --check now supports the -r format from the corresponding BSD tool.
561 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
563 pwd now works also on systems without openat. On such systems, pwd
564 would fail when run from a directory whose absolute name contained
565 more than PATH_MAX / 3 components. The df, stat and readlink programs
566 are also affected due to their use of the canonicalize_* functions.
568 ** Changes in behavior
570 timeout now only processes the first signal received from the set
571 it is handling (SIGTERM, SIGINT, ...). This is to support systems that
572 implicitly create threads for some timer functions (like GNU/kFreeBSD).
576 "make dist" no longer builds .tar.gz files.
577 xz is portable enough and in wide-enough use that distributing
578 only .tar.xz files is enough.
581 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.13 (2011-09-08) [stable]
585 chown and chgrp with the -v --from= options, now output the correct owner.
586 I.E. for skipped files, the original ownership is output, not the new one.
587 [bug introduced in sh-utils-2.0g]
589 cp -r could mistakenly change the permissions of an existing destination
590 directory. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.8]
592 cp -u -p would fail to preserve one hard link for each up-to-date copy
593 of a src-hard-linked name in the destination tree. I.e., if s/a and s/b
594 are hard-linked and dst/s/a is up to date, "cp -up s dst" would copy s/b
595 to dst/s/b rather than simply linking dst/s/b to dst/s/a.
596 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
598 fts-using tools (rm, du, chmod, chgrp, chown, chcon) no longer use memory
599 proportional to the number of entries in each directory they process.
600 Before, rm -rf 4-million-entry-directory would consume about 1GiB of memory.
601 Now, it uses less than 30MB, no matter how many entries there are.
602 [this bug was inherent in the use of fts: thus, for rm the bug was
603 introduced in coreutils-8.0. The prior implementation of rm did not use
604 as much memory. du, chmod, chgrp and chown started using fts in 6.0.
605 chcon was added in coreutils-6.9.91 with fts support. ]
607 pr -T no longer ignores a specified LAST_PAGE to stop at.
608 [bug introduced in textutils-1.19q]
610 printf '%d' '"' no longer accesses out-of-bounds memory in the diagnostic.
611 [bug introduced in sh-utils-1.16]
613 split --number l/... no longer creates extraneous files in certain cases.
614 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
616 timeout now sends signals to commands that create their own process group.
617 timeout is no longer confused when starting off with a child process.
618 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.0]
620 unexpand -a now aligns correctly when there are spaces spanning a tabstop,
621 followed by a tab. In that case a space was dropped, causing misalignment.
622 We also now ensure that a space never precedes a tab.
623 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
625 ** Changes in behavior
627 chmod, chown and chgrp now output the original attributes in messages,
628 when -v or -c specified.
630 cp -au (where --preserve=links is implicit) may now replace newer
631 files in the destination, to mirror hard links from the source.
635 date now accepts ISO 8601 date-time strings with "T" as the
636 separator. It has long parsed dates like "2004-02-29 16:21:42"
637 with a space between the date and time strings. Now it also parses
638 "2004-02-29T16:21:42" and fractional-second and time-zone-annotated
639 variants like "2004-02-29T16:21:42.333-07:00"
641 md5sum accepts the new --strict option. With --check, it makes the
642 tool exit non-zero for any invalid input line, rather than just warning.
643 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
645 split accepts a new --filter=CMD option. With it, split filters output
646 through CMD. CMD may use the $FILE environment variable, which is set to
647 the nominal output file name for each invocation of CMD. For example, to
648 split a file into 3 approximately equal parts, which are then compressed:
649 split -n3 --filter='xz > $FILE.xz' big
650 Note the use of single quotes, not double quotes.
651 That creates files named xaa.xz, xab.xz and xac.xz.
653 timeout accepts a new --foreground option, to support commands not started
654 directly from a shell prompt, where the command is interactive or needs to
655 receive signals initiated from the terminal.
659 cp -p now copies trivial NSFv4 ACLs on Solaris 10. Before, it would
660 mistakenly apply a non-trivial ACL to the destination file.
662 cp and ls now support HP-UX 11.11's ACLs, thanks to improved support
665 df now supports disk partitions larger than 4 TiB on MacOS X 10.5
666 or newer and on AIX 5.2 or newer.
668 join --check-order now prints "join: FILE:LINE_NUMBER: bad_line" for an
669 unsorted input, rather than e.g., "join: file 1 is not in sorted order".
671 shuf outputs small subsets of large permutations much more efficiently.
672 For example 'shuf -i1-$((2**32-1)) -n2' no longer exhausts memory.
674 stat -f now recognizes the GPFS, MQUEUE and PSTOREFS file system types.
676 timeout now supports sub-second timeouts.
680 Changes inherited from gnulib address a build failure on HP-UX 11.11
681 when using /opt/ansic/bin/cc.
683 Numerous portability and build improvements inherited via gnulib.
686 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.12 (2011-04-26) [stable]
690 tail's --follow=name option no longer implies --retry on systems
691 with inotify support. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
693 ** Changes in behavior
695 cp's extent-based (FIEMAP) copying code is more reliable in the face
696 of varying and undocumented file system semantics:
697 - it no longer treats unwritten extents specially
698 - a FIEMAP-based extent copy always uses the FIEMAP_FLAG_SYNC flag.
699 Before, it would incur the performance penalty of that sync only
700 for 2.6.38 and older kernels. We thought all problems would be
702 - it now attempts a FIEMAP copy only on a file that appears sparse.
703 Sparse files are relatively unusual, and the copying code incurs
704 the performance penalty of the now-mandatory sync only for them.
708 dd once again compiles on AIX 5.1 and 5.2
711 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.11 (2011-04-13) [stable]
715 cp -a --link would not create a hardlink to a symlink, instead
716 copying the symlink and then not preserving its timestamp.
717 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
719 cp now avoids FIEMAP issues with BTRFS before Linux 2.6.38,
720 which could result in corrupt copies of sparse files.
721 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
723 cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
724 delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
725 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
727 du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR
728 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
730 sort no longer spawns 7 worker threads to sort 16 lines
731 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
733 touch built on Solaris 9 would segfault when run on Solaris 10
734 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
736 wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
737 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
741 dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options,
742 which will discard any cache associated with the files, or
743 processed portion thereof.
745 dd now warns that 'iflag=fullblock' should be used,
746 in various cases where partial reads can cause issues.
748 ** Changes in behavior
750 cp now avoids syncing files when possible, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
751 The sync is only needed on Linux kernels before 2.6.39.
752 [The sync was introduced in coreutils-8.10]
754 cp now copies empty extents efficiently, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
755 It no longer reads the zero bytes from the input, and also can efficiently
756 create a hole in the output file when --sparse=always is specified.
758 df now aligns columns consistently, and no longer wraps entries
759 with longer device identifiers, over two lines.
761 install now rejects its long-deprecated --preserve_context option.
762 Use --preserve-context instead.
764 test now accepts "==" as a synonym for "="
767 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
771 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
772 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
773 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
774 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
775 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
777 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
778 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
780 join -v2 now ensures the default output format prints the match field
781 at the start of the line when it is different to the match field for
782 the first file. [bug present in "the beginning".]
784 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
785 reject file names invalid for that file system.
787 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
788 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
792 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
793 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
794 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
795 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
796 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
797 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
798 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
799 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
801 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
802 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
803 the same number of fields are output for each line.
805 ** Changes in behavior
807 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
808 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
809 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
812 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
816 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
817 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
818 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
821 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
825 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
826 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
828 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
829 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
831 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
832 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
834 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
835 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
836 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
837 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
839 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
840 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
842 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
843 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
844 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
846 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
848 ** Changes in behavior
850 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
851 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
852 to the number of available processors.
856 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
859 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
863 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
864 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
865 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
866 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
868 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
869 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
870 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
872 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
873 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
875 ** Changes in behavior
877 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
878 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
880 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
881 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
882 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
883 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
884 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
885 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
887 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
888 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
889 the same way as the others.
891 stat gained support for several printf-style flags, such as %'s for
892 listing sizes with the current locale's thousands separator.
895 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
899 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
900 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
901 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
903 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
904 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
906 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
907 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
908 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
910 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
911 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
913 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
914 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
916 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
917 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
918 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
920 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
921 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
922 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
923 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
927 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
928 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
930 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
933 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
934 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
936 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
938 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
939 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
940 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
942 ** Changes in behavior
944 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
945 rather than its aliased target.
947 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
948 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
949 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
951 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
952 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
953 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
954 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
955 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
956 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
957 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
958 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
960 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
962 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
964 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
965 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
968 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
969 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
970 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
971 control like taskset for example.
973 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
975 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
976 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
977 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
978 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
979 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
980 includes %C when context information is available.
982 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
983 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
984 rather than a file system attribute.
986 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
987 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
988 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
989 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
991 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
992 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
993 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
995 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
996 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
997 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
1000 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
1004 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
1005 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
1007 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
1009 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
1010 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1012 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
1013 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
1014 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
1015 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
1017 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
1018 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
1019 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
1023 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
1024 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
1026 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
1027 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
1028 duration after the initial signal was sent.
1030 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
1031 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
1032 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
1033 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
1034 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
1035 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
1036 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
1037 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
1038 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
1040 ** Changes in behavior
1042 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
1043 sequence when it would be a no-op.
1045 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
1046 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
1049 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
1053 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
1054 of available processors, which may not have been the case
1055 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
1056 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
1060 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
1061 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
1063 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
1064 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
1065 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
1066 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
1068 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
1069 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
1070 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
1073 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
1077 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
1078 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
1079 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
1081 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
1082 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
1083 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
1085 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
1086 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
1088 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
1089 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
1090 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
1091 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
1093 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
1094 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
1095 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
1097 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
1098 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
1099 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
1100 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1102 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
1103 renamed-aside and then recreated.
1104 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1106 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
1107 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
1108 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
1109 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1111 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
1112 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
1113 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
1115 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
1116 processes will not intersperse their output.
1117 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
1120 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
1124 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
1125 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
1127 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
1128 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
1130 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
1131 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
1132 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
1133 the presence of the empty string argument.
1134 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
1136 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
1137 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
1138 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
1139 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1141 tail without -f no longer accesses uninitialized memory
1142 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
1144 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
1145 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
1146 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
1148 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
1149 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
1150 and with a malicious user on the same system
1151 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
1152 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
1155 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
1159 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
1160 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
1161 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
1163 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
1164 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
1165 offending directory and all "contents."
1167 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
1168 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
1169 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
1171 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
1172 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
1173 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1175 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
1176 processes will not intersperse their output.
1177 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
1178 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
1180 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
1181 output the name of the file to stdout.
1182 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
1184 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
1185 call fails with errno == EACCES.
1186 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
1188 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
1189 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
1192 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
1193 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
1194 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
1196 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
1197 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
1198 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
1199 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
1200 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
1201 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1203 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
1204 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
1205 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
1206 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
1208 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
1209 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
1211 ** Changes in behavior
1213 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
1214 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
1215 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
1216 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
1217 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
1219 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
1220 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
1221 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
1222 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
1224 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
1226 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
1227 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
1228 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
1229 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
1230 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
1234 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
1238 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
1239 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
1241 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
1242 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
1244 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
1245 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
1246 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
1248 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
1249 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
1252 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
1256 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
1257 when the source file doesn't have write access.
1258 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1260 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
1261 to accommodate leap seconds.
1262 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
1264 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
1265 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
1266 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1268 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
1270 "ls -is" is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
1271 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
1272 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
1274 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
1275 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
1276 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
1277 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
1278 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
1282 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
1283 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
1284 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceding name is a
1285 directory or a symlink to a directory.
1287 ** Changes in behavior
1289 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
1290 environment variable is set.
1292 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
1293 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
1294 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
1298 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
1299 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
1300 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
1301 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
1303 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
1304 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
1305 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
1306 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
1310 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
1311 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
1312 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
1314 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
1315 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
1316 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
1317 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
1318 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
1319 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
1320 another improvement:
1322 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
1323 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
1326 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
1330 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
1331 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
1332 and libraries tested at configure time.
1333 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1335 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
1336 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1338 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
1339 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1341 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
1342 printing a summary to stderr.
1343 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1345 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
1346 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
1347 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
1349 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
1350 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
1352 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
1353 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
1354 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
1355 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1357 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
1358 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
1359 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
1360 which is relatively unusual.
1361 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1363 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
1364 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
1365 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
1366 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
1367 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
1368 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
1369 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1373 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
1374 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
1375 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
1376 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
1377 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
1381 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
1382 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
1384 ** Changes in behavior
1386 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
1387 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
1388 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
1389 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
1390 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
1393 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
1397 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
1398 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
1400 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
1401 before data copying has started.
1403 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
1404 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1406 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
1407 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
1408 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
1409 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1411 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
1412 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
1413 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
1414 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
1416 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
1421 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
1422 for its standard streams.
1424 ** Changes in behavior
1426 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
1427 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
1428 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
1429 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
1430 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
1431 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
1433 ** Deprecated options
1435 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
1436 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
1440 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
1442 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
1443 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
1444 a btrfs file system.
1446 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
1448 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
1449 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
1451 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
1452 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
1455 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
1459 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
1460 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
1461 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
1462 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
1464 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
1465 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
1466 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
1467 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
1468 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
1473 make check: two tests have been corrected
1477 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
1478 inherited from gnulib.
1481 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
1485 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
1486 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
1487 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
1488 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
1490 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
1491 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
1493 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
1495 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
1496 systems without xattr support.
1498 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
1499 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
1500 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
1502 ** Changes in behavior
1504 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
1505 This is mainly noticeable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
1506 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
1507 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
1509 ** Improved robustness
1511 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
1512 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
1513 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
1514 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
1515 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
1516 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
1517 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
1518 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
1519 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1523 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
1524 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
1526 'id -G $USER' now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
1527 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
1528 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
1529 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1530 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1533 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
1537 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
1538 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
1539 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
1543 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
1544 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
1545 data was read, or on process exit.
1546 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1548 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
1549 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
1550 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
1551 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1553 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
1554 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
1555 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
1556 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1558 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
1559 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
1561 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
1562 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1564 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
1565 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
1566 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
1568 ** Changes in behavior
1570 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
1571 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
1572 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
1574 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
1575 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
1577 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
1578 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
1579 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
1582 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
1586 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
1588 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
1589 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
1590 install: Never copies xattrs
1592 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
1593 from overwriting any existing destination file
1595 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
1596 mode where this feature is available.
1598 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
1599 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
1600 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
1601 do not modify the destination at all.
1603 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
1605 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
1609 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
1610 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
1612 cp uses much less memory in some situations
1614 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
1615 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
1617 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
1618 processing the first file name
1620 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
1621 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
1622 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
1623 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1625 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
1626 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
1628 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
1629 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
1632 ** Changes in behavior
1634 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
1635 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
1637 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
1638 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
1639 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
1641 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
1642 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
1644 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
1646 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
1647 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
1648 is still marked with a '+'.
1651 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
1655 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
1656 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
1660 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
1661 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
1662 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
1663 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
1664 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
1665 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
1667 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1668 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1670 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
1671 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
1673 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
1675 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
1676 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
1677 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
1679 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
1680 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
1682 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
1683 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
1684 used to factor large numbers.
1686 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
1689 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
1691 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
1693 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
1694 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
1696 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
1697 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
1698 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
1699 maximum command-line (argv) length.
1701 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
1702 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
1703 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
1705 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
1706 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
1710 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
1712 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
1713 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
1715 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
1716 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
1718 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
1720 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
1721 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
1725 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
1726 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
1727 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
1729 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
1731 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
1732 no matter how many files are in a given directory. I.e., to list a directory
1733 with very many files, ls -1U is much more efficient.
1735 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
1736 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
1737 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
1739 ** Changes in behavior
1741 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
1742 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
1745 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
1749 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve nanosecond resolution on
1750 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimensat' and
1751 'futimens' system calls.
1755 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
1757 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
1758 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
1759 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
1761 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
1762 with no USERNAME argument.
1764 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
1765 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
1766 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
1768 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
1769 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
1770 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
1771 number of fields for some inputs.
1773 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
1774 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1776 ** Changes in behavior
1778 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1779 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1782 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1786 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1788 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1789 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1790 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1791 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1793 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1794 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1796 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1797 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1799 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1800 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1802 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1803 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1804 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1805 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1807 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1808 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1809 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1810 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1811 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1812 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1814 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1815 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1817 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1818 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1819 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1821 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1822 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1824 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1825 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1827 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1828 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1829 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1830 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1832 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1833 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1835 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1836 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1838 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1839 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1840 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1844 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1845 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1847 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1848 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1849 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1850 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1854 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1855 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1857 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1859 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1863 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1864 which have negative errno values.
1868 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1872 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1876 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1877 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1880 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1884 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1885 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1886 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1888 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1889 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1890 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1891 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1895 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1896 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1897 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1898 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1901 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1905 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1907 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1908 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1909 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1912 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1916 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1917 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1919 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1921 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1923 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1925 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1929 ** Changes in behavior
1931 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1932 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1934 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1935 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1937 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1938 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1939 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1943 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1944 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1945 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1946 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1947 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1948 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1949 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1950 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1951 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1952 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1953 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1955 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1956 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1957 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1960 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1963 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1964 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1965 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1967 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1968 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1969 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1972 ** New build options
1974 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1975 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1976 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1977 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1979 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1980 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1981 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1982 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1983 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1984 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1985 of "make check" fail.
1987 ** Remove deprecated options
1989 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1990 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1991 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1992 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1993 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1995 ** Improved robustness
1997 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1998 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1999 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
2000 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
2001 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
2002 loss of the contents of a/f.
2004 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
2005 in its 35-colon command-line argument
2009 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
2010 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
2011 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
2013 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
2014 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
2015 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
2016 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
2018 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
2019 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
2020 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
2021 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
2022 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
2023 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
2024 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
2025 destination is a symlink.
2027 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
2029 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
2030 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
2032 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
2033 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
2035 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
2037 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
2038 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
2040 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
2041 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
2043 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
2046 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
2047 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
2049 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
2050 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
2052 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
2053 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
2054 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
2055 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
2057 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
2058 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
2059 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
2061 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
2062 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
2063 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
2065 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
2066 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
2067 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
2068 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
2070 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
2071 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
2072 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
2074 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
2075 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
2077 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
2078 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
2080 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
2082 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
2083 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
2084 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
2086 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
2087 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
2089 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
2090 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
2092 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
2093 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
2095 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
2096 [present in the original version]
2099 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
2103 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
2105 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
2106 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
2107 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
2109 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
2110 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
2112 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
2116 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
2117 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
2119 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
2120 support but with insufficient /proc support.
2122 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
2123 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
2125 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
2126 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
2127 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
2128 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
2129 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
2130 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
2132 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
2133 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
2136 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
2137 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
2139 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
2142 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
2143 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
2144 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
2146 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
2147 directory is unreadable.
2149 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
2150 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
2151 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
2153 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
2154 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
2155 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
2156 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
2157 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
2160 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
2161 Before it would print nothing.
2163 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
2165 "rm -rf D" would emit a misleading diagnostic when failing to
2166 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
2167 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
2168 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
2169 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
2170 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
2171 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
2172 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
2174 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
2178 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
2179 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
2180 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
2182 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
2183 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
2184 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
2185 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
2188 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
2192 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
2193 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
2194 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
2195 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
2196 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
2197 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
2198 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
2200 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
2201 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
2202 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
2203 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
2204 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
2205 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
2206 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
2207 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
2209 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
2210 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
2211 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
2214 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
2218 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
2219 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
2221 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
2222 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
2223 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
2225 ** Improved robustness
2227 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
2228 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
2229 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
2232 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
2236 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
2237 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
2238 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
2239 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
2240 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
2242 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
2246 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
2249 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
2253 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
2254 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
2255 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
2256 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
2258 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
2259 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
2261 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
2262 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
2263 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
2266 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
2268 ** Improved robustness
2270 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
2271 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
2273 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
2274 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
2275 or NFS-mounted partition.
2277 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
2278 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
2282 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
2283 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
2284 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
2285 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
2286 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
2287 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
2289 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
2290 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
2292 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
2293 or neglect to report file removal.
2295 For the "groups" command:
2297 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
2298 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
2300 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
2302 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
2304 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
2308 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
2309 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
2312 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
2314 ** Changes in behavior
2316 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
2317 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
2318 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
2319 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
2321 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., 'rm -fr /'
2322 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
2323 a final './' or '../' component.
2325 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
2326 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
2327 this only for pipes.
2329 ** Infrastructure changes
2331 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
2332 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
2333 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
2334 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
2338 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
2339 name is "." or "..".
2341 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
2342 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
2343 dirent.d_type support.
2345 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
2346 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
2348 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
2349 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
2350 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
2351 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
2354 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
2356 ** Changes in behavior
2358 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
2362 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
2363 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
2367 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
2368 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
2369 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
2371 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
2372 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
2374 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
2375 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
2377 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
2379 ** Improved robustness
2381 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
2382 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
2383 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
2385 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
2386 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
2389 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
2390 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
2392 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
2393 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
2395 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
2396 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
2398 ** Changes in behavior
2400 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
2401 where the two are distinct.
2403 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
2404 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
2405 'chmod 755 DIR' and 'chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
2406 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
2407 similarly for 'mkdir -m 755 DIR' and 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
2408 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
2409 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
2410 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., 'mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
2411 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
2412 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
2413 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
2414 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
2415 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 'mkdir -m
2416 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but 'chmod 777 D' clears it.
2417 Conversely, Solaris 10 'mkdir -m 777 D', 'mkdir -m g-s D', and
2418 'chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
2419 something like 'chmod g-s D' to clear it.
2421 'cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
2422 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
2423 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
2425 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
2426 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
2427 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
2428 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
2431 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
2432 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
2436 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
2437 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
2438 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
2439 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
2441 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
2442 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
2443 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
2445 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
2446 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
2447 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
2448 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
2449 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
2452 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
2453 e.g., 'mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
2455 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
2456 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
2457 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
2458 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
2460 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
2461 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
2462 successful and the output is easier to parse.
2464 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
2465 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
2466 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
2467 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
2469 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
2470 and sticky) with the -m option.
2472 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
2473 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
2474 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
2475 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
2476 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
2478 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
2479 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
2481 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
2485 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
2486 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
2487 You no longer need the '-f%.f' in 'seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
2488 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
2490 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
2492 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
2494 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
2495 silently ignoring one of them.
2497 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
2498 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
2499 containing this change was 5.92.
2501 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
2502 automatically newline terminated.
2504 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
2505 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
2506 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
2507 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
2510 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
2511 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2512 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
2515 ** Scheduled for removal
2517 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
2518 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
2520 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
2521 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
2522 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
2523 command to unlink a directory.
2525 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
2526 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
2527 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
2528 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
2532 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
2533 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
2534 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
2535 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
2536 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
2537 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
2541 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
2542 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
2544 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
2546 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
2547 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
2548 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
2550 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
2551 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
2554 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
2555 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
2557 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
2558 list directories before files.
2560 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
2561 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
2562 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
2563 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
2566 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
2568 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and 'R' ordering option.
2570 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
2571 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
2572 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
2574 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2575 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2579 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
2580 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
2581 usually printing nothing.
2583 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
2585 When 'cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
2586 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
2587 them with hard-linked directories.
2589 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
2590 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
2591 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
2593 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
2594 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
2595 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
2597 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
2600 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
2601 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
2603 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
2604 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
2606 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
2607 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
2609 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
2610 all command-line arguments.
2612 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
2614 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
2616 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
2617 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
2619 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
2621 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
2622 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
2623 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
2624 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
2625 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
2627 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
2628 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
2630 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
2631 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
2632 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
2633 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
2635 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
2637 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
2641 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
2642 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
2644 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
2645 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
2647 md5sum once again defaults to using the ' ' non-binary marker
2648 (rather than the '*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
2650 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
2651 a directory like 'nonexistent/.'
2653 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
2654 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
2656 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
2658 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
2659 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
2660 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
2663 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
2665 ** Build-related bug fixes
2667 installing .mo files would fail
2670 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
2674 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
2676 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
2679 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
2683 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
2684 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
2688 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
2690 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
2691 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
2693 ** Deprecated options
2695 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
2696 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use '-k' instead.
2698 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
2702 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
2704 ** Bring back support for 'head -NUM', 'tail -NUM', etc. even when
2705 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
2706 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
2707 conforming to older POSIX versions.
2709 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
2712 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
2718 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
2723 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
2725 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
2727 date -I TIMESPEC (use 'date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
2728 od -w WIDTH (use 'od -wWIDTH' instead)
2729 pr -S STRING (use 'pr -SSTRING' instead)
2731 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
2732 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
2733 problematic usages. These include:
2735 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
2736 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
2737 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
2738 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
2739 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
2740 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
2741 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
2742 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
2743 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
2745 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
2746 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
2748 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
2749 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
2750 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
2751 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
2753 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
2754 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
2755 between binary and text files.
2757 The following programs now always use text input/output:
2761 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
2765 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
2766 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
2768 head tac tail tee tr
2769 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
2771 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
2772 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
2774 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2775 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2776 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2778 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2780 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2782 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2783 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2784 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2788 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2790 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2791 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2793 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2794 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2795 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2799 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2800 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2804 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2805 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2806 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2810 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2811 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2815 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2817 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2819 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2823 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2824 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2825 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2827 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2828 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2829 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2830 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2831 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2833 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2837 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2838 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2839 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2841 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2843 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2844 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2845 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2846 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2848 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2850 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2851 rather than silently wrapping around.
2853 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2854 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2856 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2857 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2859 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the '.'-relative
2860 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2861 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2862 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2864 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2866 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2868 ** Improved robustness
2870 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2871 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2872 no matter how large the result.
2874 ** Improved portability
2876 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2877 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2879 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2881 'rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2882 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2883 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2885 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2886 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2890 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2891 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2893 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2895 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2896 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2897 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2898 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2900 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2901 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2903 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2904 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2905 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2907 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2909 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2910 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2912 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2913 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2915 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2917 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2918 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2920 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2921 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2923 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2924 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2925 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2927 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2929 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2931 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2935 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2937 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2938 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2939 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2941 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2942 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2944 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2945 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2946 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2948 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2949 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2951 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2952 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2953 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2954 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2956 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2957 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2959 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2960 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2961 the file system does not support it.
2963 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2965 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2966 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2968 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2970 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2971 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2973 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2974 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2975 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2976 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2978 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2979 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2982 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2983 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2984 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2985 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2987 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2988 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2989 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2990 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2992 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2993 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2995 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2997 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2998 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2999 reporting incorrect results.
3003 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
3004 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
3006 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
3009 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
3011 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
3012 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
3014 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
3015 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
3017 'pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to 'pr -N' when also using
3020 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
3021 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
3022 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
3023 the file name does not look like a page range.
3025 printf has several changes:
3027 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
3028 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
3030 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
3031 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
3032 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
3034 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
3035 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
3038 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
3039 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
3041 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
3042 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
3044 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
3046 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
3047 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
3049 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
3051 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
3053 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
3054 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
3055 when first encountering the directory.
3059 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
3060 output; POSIX requires this.
3062 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
3063 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
3065 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
3067 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
3068 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
3070 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
3071 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
3073 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
3074 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
3075 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
3076 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
3077 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
3078 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
3079 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
3081 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
3082 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
3083 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
3085 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
3086 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
3088 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
3090 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
3092 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
3093 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
3094 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
3095 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
3097 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
3101 For efficiency, 'sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
3102 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
3103 some relatively-contrived examples like 'cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
3104 are no longer safe, as 'sort' might start writing F before 'cat' is
3105 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless '-m' is used.
3107 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
3108 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
3109 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
3111 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
3112 is longer than PATH_MAX.
3114 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
3115 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
3117 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
3118 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
3119 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
3120 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
3121 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
3123 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
3124 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
3126 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
3127 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
3129 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
3131 nocreat do not create the output file
3132 excl fail if the output file already exists
3133 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
3134 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
3136 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
3138 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
3139 direct use direct I/O for data
3140 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
3141 sync likewise, but also for metadata
3142 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
3143 nofollow do not follow symlinks
3144 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
3146 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
3148 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
3149 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append '\n' to the format
3152 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
3153 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
3154 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
3155 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
3156 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
3157 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
3159 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
3160 list of NUL-terminated file names.
3162 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
3165 Dates like 'January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
3167 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
3169 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
3170 prefixed by '@'. For example, '@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
3172 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
3173 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
3174 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
3176 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
3177 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
3178 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
3180 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
3182 'date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
3183 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
3185 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
3186 for compatibility with bash.
3188 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
3190 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
3191 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
3192 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
3193 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
3195 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
3196 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
3198 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
3199 ls supports TABSIZE.
3200 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
3201 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
3202 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
3204 The usual '--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
3207 'od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
3209 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
3210 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
3211 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
3212 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
3213 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
3214 an offset, not as a file name.
3216 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
3217 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
3219 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
3220 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
3222 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
3223 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
3225 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
3226 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
3227 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
3229 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
3230 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
3232 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
3233 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
3237 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
3239 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
3241 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
3245 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
3246 or more arguments between partitions.
3248 'cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
3249 holes in the destination.
3251 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
3252 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
3253 this change, if you ran 'ssh localhost', then 'nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
3254 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
3255 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
3256 terminates immediately.
3258 'expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
3260 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
3262 The '|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
3263 arguments are null or zero. E.g., 'expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
3264 not the empty string.
3266 The '|' and '&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
3267 'expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
3271 'chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
3272 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
3273 containing '.' that happens to equal 'user.group'.
3276 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
3283 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
3287 'cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
3288 declare stat and lstat as 'static inline' functions.
3290 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
3291 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
3293 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
3294 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
3295 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
3298 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
3302 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
3303 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
3305 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
3306 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
3308 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
3309 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
3310 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
3312 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
3314 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
3317 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
3319 ** Configuration option
3321 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
3322 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
3326 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
3327 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
3331 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
3332 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
3333 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
3336 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
3337 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
3338 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
3339 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
3340 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
3341 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
3342 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3345 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
3349 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
3350 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
3351 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
3353 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
3354 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
3356 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
3358 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
3359 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
3360 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
3361 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
3363 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
3365 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
3366 not just the ones that reference directories
3368 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
3369 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
3371 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
3372 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
3373 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
3375 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
3376 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
3377 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
3378 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
3379 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
3380 ragged when a datum was too wide.
3382 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
3387 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
3388 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
3390 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
3392 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
3394 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
3396 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
3397 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
3399 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
3400 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
3402 dd 'unblock' and 'sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
3404 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
3408 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
3410 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
3412 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
3413 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
3414 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
3415 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
3416 resolution is the best we can do right now.
3418 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
3419 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
3421 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
3422 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
3424 'sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
3425 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
3427 who -l now means 'who --login', not 'who --lookup', per POSIX.
3428 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
3429 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
3433 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via 'mv B b' when 'B' is
3434 the same directory entry as 'b' no longer destroys the directory entry
3435 referenced by both 'b' and 'B'. Note that this would happen only on
3436 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
3437 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
3438 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
3439 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
3440 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
3441 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
3442 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
3443 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
3444 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
3445 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
3446 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
3448 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in '%'
3450 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
3451 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
3453 'split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
3455 'df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
3457 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
3458 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
3460 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
3462 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
3463 without a trailing newline.
3465 'tail -n0 -f FILE' and 'tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
3466 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
3468 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
3471 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
3475 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
3477 'test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
3479 'test -t', 'test --help', and 'test --version' now silently exit
3480 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
3481 'test -t 1'. To get help and version info for 'test', use
3482 '[ --help' and '[ --version'.
3484 'test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
3486 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
3487 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
3488 be printed without leading spaces.
3490 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
3491 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
3496 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
3497 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
3498 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
3500 '[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
3502 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
3503 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
3505 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
3506 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
3508 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
3509 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
3511 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
3513 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
3515 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
3517 'sort --version' and 'sort --help' fail, as they should
3518 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
3520 'su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
3522 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
3524 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
3525 byte offsets are specified.
3528 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
3531 - new program: '[' (much like 'test')
3534 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
3535 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
3536 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
3537 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
3538 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
3539 - chown: '.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
3540 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
3541 on such a system, then it still accepts '.', by default. If chown
3542 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
3543 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
3544 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
3545 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
3546 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
3547 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
3548 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
3549 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
3550 directory where M has write access.
3551 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
3552 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
3553 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
3556 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
3557 - 'du /' once again prints the '/' on the last line
3558 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
3559 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
3560 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
3561 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted 'file truncated' warning.
3562 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
3563 - df and 'readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
3564 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
3565 - 'env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
3566 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
3567 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
3568 - mv now removes 'a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
3569 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
3570 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
3571 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
3572 - date's '-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
3573 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
3574 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like '-72x'
3575 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
3576 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
3577 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
3578 appeared one additional time.
3580 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
3581 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
3582 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
3583 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
3586 - 'kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than '?') on systems
3587 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
3588 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
3589 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
3590 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
3591 Before 'rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
3592 if there were more than 338.
3594 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
3595 - false --help now exits nonzero
3598 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
3599 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
3600 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
3601 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
3604 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
3605 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of '0'
3606 * seq now accepts " " and "'" as valid format flag characters
3607 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
3608 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
3611 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
3612 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
3613 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
3614 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to "infinite" recursion
3615 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
3616 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
3617 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3620 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
3621 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
3622 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
3623 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
3624 * 'df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
3625 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
3627 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3628 under certain unusual conditions
3629 * mv and 'cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
3630 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
3633 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3634 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
3635 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
3636 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
3637 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
3638 * df now always displays under 'Filesystem', the device file name
3639 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
3640 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
3641 'df /dev/hda' would list '/dev/hda' as the 'Filesystem', rather than say
3642 /dev/hda3 (the device on which '/' is mounted), as it does now.
3643 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
3644 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
3645 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
3646 'test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
3647 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
3648 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
3651 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
3652 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
3655 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
3656 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
3657 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
3658 involving hard-linked directories
3659 * 'who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
3660 * df now displays a mount point (usually '/') for non-mounted
3661 character-special and block files
3664 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
3665 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
3666 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
3667 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
3668 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
3669 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
3670 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
3671 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
3672 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
3674 * ls dangling-symlink now prints 'dangling-symlink'.
3675 Before, it would fail with 'no such file or directory'.
3676 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
3677 attributes of 'symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
3678 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
3679 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
3680 specified on the command line.
3681 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
3682 Before, 'shred --zero file' would produce 'shred: missing file argument',
3683 and worse, 'shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
3684 the first file untouched.
3685 * readlink: new program
3686 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
3687 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
3688 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
3689 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
3690 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
3691 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
3694 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
3695 * 'ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
3696 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
3697 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
3698 * 'du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
3699 * 'du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
3700 * In the unlikely event that running 'du /' resulted in 'stat ("/", ...)'
3701 failing, du would give a diagnostic about '' (empty string) rather than '/'.
3702 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
3703 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
3704 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
3705 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
3707 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
3708 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
3709 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
3711 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
3712 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
3713 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
3714 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
3715 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
3716 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
3717 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
3718 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this 'yes|nl -s%n'
3721 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
3722 * 'ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
3725 * 'rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
3726 * 'tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
3727 * 'mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
3728 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
3729 * printf now honors the '--' command line delimiter
3730 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
3731 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
3734 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
3735 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
3737 ========================================================================
3738 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
3739 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3742 * 'rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
3744 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3745 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
3746 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
3747 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
3748 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
3749 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
3750 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
3751 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 through 4.1.9.
3752 * 'rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
3753 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
3754 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
3755 The old options will continue to work for a while.
3757 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
3758 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
3759 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
3760 * 'touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
3762 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
3765 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
3767 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
3768 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
3769 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
3770 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
3771 * The obsolete usage 'touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
3772 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
3773 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3776 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3777 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3778 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3779 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3780 A missing 'B' (e.g. '1M') has the same meaning as before.
3781 A trailing 'B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3782 The nonstandard 'D' suffix (e.g. '1MD') is now obsolescent.
3783 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3784 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3785 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3786 * You can omit an integer '1' before a block size suffix,
3787 e.g. 'df -BG' is equivalent to 'df -B 1G' and to 'df --block-size=1G'.
3788 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3789 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3790 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3791 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3793 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3794 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3796 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3797 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3798 * dd once again uses 'lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3799 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3800 resort to emulating 'skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3801 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3803 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3804 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3805 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3806 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3807 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3808 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., 'chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3809 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3811 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3812 the source files in the following example:
3813 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3814 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3815 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3816 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3817 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3818 links between source files with --preserve=links
3819 * cp accepts new options:
3820 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3821 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3822 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3823 to '--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3824 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3825 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3826 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3827 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off '-i'.
3828 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3830 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3831 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3832 * mv: fix the bug whereby 'mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3833 even though it's older than dest.
3834 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3835 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3836 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3837 * 'ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3838 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3840 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3841 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3842 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3843 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3844 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3845 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3846 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3848 - The 'full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3849 '2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3850 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3852 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3853 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3854 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3855 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3856 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3857 This is the default.
3859 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3860 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3861 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3862 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3863 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3865 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3868 ========================================================================
3869 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3870 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3873 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3874 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3876 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3877 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3878 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3879 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3880 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3882 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3883 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3884 that specifies a non-directory
3887 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3888 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3889 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3890 the long option '--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3891 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3892 - 'date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use 'date --iso-8601'.
3893 - 'nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use 'nice -n NUM'.
3894 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3895 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3896 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3897 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3898 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3899 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3900 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3901 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3902 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3903 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3904 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3905 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3906 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3907 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3908 This problem arose only with relative date strings like 'last monday'.
3909 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3910 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3912 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3913 * 'date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3914 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3916 * 'date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3918 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3919 'write error' when invoked with the --version option
3921 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3922 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3923 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3924 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the 'C' locale
3925 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3927 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3928 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3929 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3930 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3931 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3933 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3935 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3936 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3937 * still more portability fixes
3938 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3939 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3941 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3943 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3945 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3947 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3948 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3949 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3950 there is any time remaining
3951 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3953 ========================================================================
3954 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3955 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3957 This package began as the union of the following:
3958 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3960 ========================================================================
3962 Copyright (C) 2001-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3964 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3965 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3966 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3967 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3968 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the "GNU Free
3969 Documentation License" file as part of this distribution.