1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
8 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
9 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
11 du now diagnoses an ostensible directory cycle and arranges to exit nonzero.
12 Before, it would silently ignore the offending directory and all "contents."
14 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
15 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
16 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
18 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
19 processes will not intersperse their output.
20 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
21 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
23 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
24 output the name of the file to stdout.
25 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
27 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
28 call fails with errno == EACCES.
29 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
31 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
32 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
35 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
36 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
37 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
39 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
40 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
41 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
42 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
43 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
44 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
46 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
47 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
49 ** Changes in behavior
51 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
52 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
53 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
54 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
55 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
57 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
59 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
60 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
61 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
62 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
63 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
67 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
68 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
70 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
71 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
73 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
74 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
77 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
81 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
82 when the source file doesn't have write access.
83 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
85 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
86 to accommodate leap seconds.
87 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
89 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
90 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
91 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
93 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
95 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
96 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
97 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
99 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
100 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
101 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
102 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
103 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
107 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
108 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
109 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
110 directory or a symlink to a directory.
112 ** Changes in behavior
114 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
115 environment variable is set.
117 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
118 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
119 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
123 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
124 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
125 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
126 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
128 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
129 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
130 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
131 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
135 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
136 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
137 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
139 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
140 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
141 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
142 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
143 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
144 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
147 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
148 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
151 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
155 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
156 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
157 and libraries tested at configure time.
158 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
160 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
161 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
163 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
164 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
166 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
167 printing a summary to stderr.
168 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
170 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
171 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
172 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
174 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
175 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
177 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
178 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
179 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
180 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
182 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
183 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
184 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
185 which is relatively unusual.
186 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
188 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
189 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
190 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
191 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
192 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
193 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
194 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
198 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
199 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
200 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
201 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
202 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
206 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
207 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
209 ** Changes in behavior
211 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
212 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
213 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
214 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
215 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
218 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
222 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
223 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
225 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
226 before data copying has started.
228 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
229 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
231 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
232 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
233 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
234 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
236 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
237 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
238 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
239 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
241 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
246 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
247 for its standard streams.
249 ** Changes in behavior
251 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
252 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
253 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
254 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
255 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
256 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
258 ** Deprecated options
260 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
261 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
265 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
267 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
268 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
271 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
273 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
274 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
276 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
277 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
280 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
284 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
285 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
286 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
287 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
289 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
290 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
291 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
292 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
293 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
298 make check: two tests have been corrected
302 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
303 inherited from gnulib.
306 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
310 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
311 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
312 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
313 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
315 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
316 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
318 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
320 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
321 systems without xattr support.
323 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
324 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
325 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
327 ** Changes in behavior
329 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
330 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
331 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
332 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
334 ** Improved robustness
336 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
337 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
338 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
339 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
340 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
341 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
342 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
343 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
344 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
348 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
349 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
351 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
352 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
353 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
354 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
355 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
358 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
362 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
363 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
364 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
368 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
369 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
370 data was read, or on process exit.
371 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
373 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
374 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
375 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
376 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
378 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
379 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
380 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
381 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
383 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
384 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
386 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
387 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
389 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
390 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
391 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
393 ** Changes in behavior
395 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
396 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
397 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
399 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
400 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
402 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
403 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
404 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
407 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
411 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
413 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
414 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
415 install: Never copies xattrs
417 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
418 from overwriting any existing destination file
420 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
421 mode where this feature is available.
423 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
424 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
425 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
426 do not modify the destination at all.
428 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
430 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
434 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
435 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
437 cp uses much less memory in some situations
439 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
440 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
442 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
443 processing the first file name
445 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
446 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
447 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
448 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
450 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
451 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
453 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
454 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
457 ** Changes in behavior
459 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
460 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
462 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
463 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
464 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
466 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
467 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
469 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
471 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
472 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
473 is still marked with a '+'.
476 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
480 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
481 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
485 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
486 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
487 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
488 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
489 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
490 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
492 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
493 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
495 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
496 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
498 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
500 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
501 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
502 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
504 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
505 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
507 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
508 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
509 used to factor large numbers.
511 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
514 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
516 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
518 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
519 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
521 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
522 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
523 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
524 maximum command-line (argv) length.
526 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
527 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
528 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
530 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
531 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
535 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
537 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
538 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
540 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
541 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
543 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
545 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
546 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
550 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
551 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
552 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
554 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
556 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
557 no matter how many files are in a given directory
559 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
560 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
561 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
563 ** Changes in behavior
565 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
566 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
569 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
573 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
575 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
576 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
577 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
579 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
580 with no USERNAME argument.
582 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
583 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
584 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
586 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
587 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
588 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
589 number of fields for some inputs.
591 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
592 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
594 ** Changes in behavior
596 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
597 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
600 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
604 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
606 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
607 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
608 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
609 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
611 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
612 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
614 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
615 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
617 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
618 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
620 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
621 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
622 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
623 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
625 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
626 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
627 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
628 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
629 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
630 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
632 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
633 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
635 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
636 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
637 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
639 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
640 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
642 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
643 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
645 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
646 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
647 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
648 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
650 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
651 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
653 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
654 in more cases when a directory is empty.
656 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
657 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
658 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
662 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
663 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
665 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
666 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
667 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
668 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
672 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
673 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
675 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
677 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
681 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
682 which have negative errno values.
686 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
690 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
694 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
695 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
698 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
702 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
703 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
704 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
706 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
707 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
708 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
709 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
713 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
714 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
715 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
716 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
719 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
723 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
725 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
726 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
727 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
730 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
734 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
735 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
737 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
739 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
741 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
743 ** Programs no longer installed by default
747 ** Changes in behavior
749 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
750 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
752 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
753 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
755 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
756 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
757 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
761 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
762 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
763 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
764 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
765 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
766 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
767 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
768 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
769 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
770 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
771 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
773 The following commands and options now support the standard size
774 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
775 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
778 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
781 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
782 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
783 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
785 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
786 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
787 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
792 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
793 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
794 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
795 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
797 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
798 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
799 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
800 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
801 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
802 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
803 of "make check" fail.
805 ** Remove deprecated options
807 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
808 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
809 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
810 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
811 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
813 ** Improved robustness
815 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
816 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
817 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
818 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
819 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
820 loss of the contents of a/f.
822 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
823 in its 35-colon command-line argument
827 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
828 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
829 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
831 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
832 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
833 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
834 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
836 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
837 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
838 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
839 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
840 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
841 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
842 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
843 destination is a symlink.
845 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
847 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
848 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
850 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
851 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
853 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
855 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
856 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
858 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
859 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
861 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
864 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
865 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
867 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
868 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
870 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
871 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
872 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
873 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
875 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
876 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
877 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
879 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
880 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
881 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
883 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
884 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
885 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
886 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
888 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
889 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
890 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
892 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
893 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
895 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
896 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
898 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
900 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
901 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
902 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
904 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
905 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
907 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
908 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
910 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
911 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
913 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
914 [present in the original version]
917 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
921 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
923 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
924 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
925 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
927 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
928 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
930 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
934 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
935 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
937 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
938 support but with insufficient /proc support.
940 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
941 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
943 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
944 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
945 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
946 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
947 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
948 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
950 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
951 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
954 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
955 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
957 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
960 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
961 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
962 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
964 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
965 directory is unreadable.
967 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
968 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
969 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
971 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
972 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
973 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
974 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
975 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
978 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
979 Before it would print nothing.
981 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
983 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
984 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
985 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
986 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
987 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
988 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
989 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
990 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
992 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
996 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
997 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
998 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1000 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1001 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1002 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1003 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1006 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1010 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1011 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1012 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1013 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1014 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1015 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1016 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1018 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1019 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1020 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1021 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1022 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1023 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1024 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1025 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1027 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1028 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1029 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1032 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1036 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1037 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1039 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1040 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1041 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1043 ** Improved robustness
1045 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1046 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1047 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1050 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1054 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1055 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1056 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1057 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1058 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1060 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1064 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1067 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1071 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1072 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1073 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1074 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1076 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1077 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1079 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1080 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1081 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1084 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1086 ** Improved robustness
1088 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1089 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1091 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1092 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1093 or NFS-mounted partition.
1095 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1096 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1100 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1101 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1102 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1103 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1104 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1105 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1107 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1108 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1110 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1111 or neglect to report file removal.
1113 For the "groups" command:
1115 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1116 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1118 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1120 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1122 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1126 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1127 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1130 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1132 ** Changes in behavior
1134 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1135 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1136 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1137 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1139 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1140 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1141 a final `./' or `../' component.
1143 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1144 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1145 this only for pipes.
1147 ** Infrastructure changes
1149 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1150 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1151 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1152 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1156 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1157 name is "." or "..".
1159 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1160 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1161 dirent.d_type support.
1163 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1164 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1166 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1167 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1168 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1169 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1172 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1174 ** Changes in behavior
1176 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1180 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1181 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1185 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1186 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1187 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1189 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1190 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1192 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1193 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1195 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1197 ** Improved robustness
1199 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1200 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1201 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1203 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1204 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1207 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1208 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1210 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1211 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1213 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1214 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1216 ** Changes in behavior
1218 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1219 where the two are distinct.
1221 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1222 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1223 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1224 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1225 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1226 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1227 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1228 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1229 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1230 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1231 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1232 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1233 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1234 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1235 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1236 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1237 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1239 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1240 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1241 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1243 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1244 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1245 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1246 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1249 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1250 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1254 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1255 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1256 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1257 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1259 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1260 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1261 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1263 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1264 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1265 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1266 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1267 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1270 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1271 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1273 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1274 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1275 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1276 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1278 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1279 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1280 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1282 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1283 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1284 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1285 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1287 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1288 and sticky) with the -m option.
1290 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1291 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1292 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1293 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1294 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1296 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1297 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1299 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1303 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1304 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1305 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1306 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1308 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1310 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1312 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1313 silently ignoring one of them.
1315 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1316 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1317 containing this change was 5.92.
1319 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1320 automatically newline terminated.
1322 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1323 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1324 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1325 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1328 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1329 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1330 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1333 ** Scheduled for removal
1335 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1336 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1338 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1339 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1340 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1341 command to unlink a directory.
1343 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1344 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1345 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1346 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1350 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1351 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1352 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1353 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1354 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1355 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1359 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1360 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1362 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1364 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1365 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1366 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1368 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1369 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1372 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1373 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1375 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1376 list directories before files.
1378 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1379 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1380 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1381 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1384 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1386 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1388 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1389 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1390 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1392 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1393 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1397 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1398 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1399 usually printing nothing.
1401 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1403 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1404 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1405 them with hard-linked directories.
1407 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1408 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1409 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1411 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1412 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1413 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1415 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1418 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1419 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1421 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1422 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1424 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1425 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1427 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1428 all command-line arguments.
1430 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1432 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1434 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1435 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1437 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1439 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1440 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1441 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1442 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1443 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1445 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1446 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1448 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1449 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1450 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1451 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1453 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1455 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1459 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1460 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1462 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1463 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1465 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1466 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1468 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1469 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1471 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1472 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1474 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1476 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1477 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1478 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1481 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1483 ** Build-related bug fixes
1485 installing .mo files would fail
1488 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1492 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1494 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1497 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1501 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1502 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1506 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1508 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1509 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1511 ** Deprecated options
1513 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1514 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1516 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1520 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1522 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1523 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1524 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1525 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1527 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1530 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1536 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1541 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1543 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1545 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1546 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1547 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1549 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1550 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1551 problematic usages. These include:
1553 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1554 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1555 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1556 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1557 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1558 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1559 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1560 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1561 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1563 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1564 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1566 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1567 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1568 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1569 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1571 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1572 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1573 between binary and text files.
1575 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1579 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1583 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1584 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1586 head tac tail tee tr
1587 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1589 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1590 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1592 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1593 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1594 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1596 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1598 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1600 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1601 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1602 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1606 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1608 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1609 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1611 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1612 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1613 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1617 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1618 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1622 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1623 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1624 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1628 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1629 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1633 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1635 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1637 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1641 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1642 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1643 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1645 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1646 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1647 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1648 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1649 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1651 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1655 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1656 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1657 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1659 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1661 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1662 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1663 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1664 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1666 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1668 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1669 rather than silently wrapping around.
1671 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1672 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1674 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1675 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1677 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1678 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1679 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1680 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1682 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1684 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1686 ** Improved robustness
1688 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1689 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1690 no matter how large the result.
1692 ** Improved portability
1694 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1695 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1697 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1699 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1700 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1701 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1703 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1704 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1708 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1709 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1711 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1713 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1714 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1715 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1716 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1718 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1719 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1721 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1722 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1723 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1725 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1727 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1728 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1730 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1731 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1733 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1735 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1736 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1738 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1739 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1741 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1742 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1743 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1745 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1747 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1749 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1753 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1755 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1756 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1757 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1759 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1760 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1762 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1763 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1764 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1766 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1767 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1769 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1770 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1771 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1772 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1774 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1775 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1777 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1778 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1779 the file system does not support it.
1781 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1783 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1784 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1786 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1788 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1789 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1791 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1792 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1793 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1794 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1796 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1797 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1800 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1801 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1802 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1803 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1805 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1806 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1807 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1808 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1810 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1811 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1813 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1815 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1816 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1817 reporting incorrect results.
1821 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1822 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1824 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1827 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1829 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1830 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1832 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1833 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1835 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1838 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1839 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1840 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1841 the file name does not look like a page range.
1843 printf has several changes:
1845 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1846 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1848 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1849 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1850 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1852 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1853 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1856 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1857 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1859 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1860 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1862 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1864 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1865 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1867 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1869 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1871 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1872 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1873 when first encountering the directory.
1877 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1878 output; POSIX requires this.
1880 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1881 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1883 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1885 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1886 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1888 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1889 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1891 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1892 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1893 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1894 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1895 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1896 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1897 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1899 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1900 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1901 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1903 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1904 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1906 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1908 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1910 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1911 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1912 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1913 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1915 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1919 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1920 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1921 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1922 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1923 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1925 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1926 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1927 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1929 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1930 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1932 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1933 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1935 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1936 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1937 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1938 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1939 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1941 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1942 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1944 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1945 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1947 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1949 nocreat do not create the output file
1950 excl fail if the output file already exists
1951 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1952 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1954 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1956 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1957 direct use direct I/O for data
1958 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1959 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1960 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1961 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1962 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1964 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1966 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1967 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1970 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1971 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1972 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1973 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1974 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1975 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1977 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1978 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1980 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1983 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1985 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1987 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1988 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1990 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1991 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1992 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1994 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1995 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1996 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1998 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2000 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2001 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2003 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2004 for compatibility with bash.
2006 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2008 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2009 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2010 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2011 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2013 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2014 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2016 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2017 ls supports TABSIZE.
2018 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2019 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2020 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2022 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2025 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2027 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2028 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2029 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2030 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2031 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2032 an offset, not as a file name.
2034 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2035 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2037 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2038 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2040 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2041 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2043 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2044 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2045 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2047 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2048 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2050 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2051 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2055 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2057 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2059 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2063 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2064 or more arguments between partitions.
2066 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2067 holes in the destination.
2069 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2070 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2071 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2072 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2073 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2074 terminates immediately.
2076 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2078 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2080 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2081 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2082 not the empty string.
2084 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2085 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2089 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2090 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2091 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2094 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2101 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2105 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2106 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2108 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2109 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2111 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2112 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2113 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2116 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2120 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2121 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2123 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2124 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2126 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2127 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2128 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2130 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2132 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2135 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2137 ** Configuration option
2139 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2140 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2144 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2145 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2149 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2150 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2151 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2154 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2155 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2156 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2157 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2158 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2159 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2160 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2163 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2167 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2168 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2169 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2171 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2172 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2174 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2176 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2177 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2178 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2179 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2181 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2183 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2184 not just the ones that reference directories
2186 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2187 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2189 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2190 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2191 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2193 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2194 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2195 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2196 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2197 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2198 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2200 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2205 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2206 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2208 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2210 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2212 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2214 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2215 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2217 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2218 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2220 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2222 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2226 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2228 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2230 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2231 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2232 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2233 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2234 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2236 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2237 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2239 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2240 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2242 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2243 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2245 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2246 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2247 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2251 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2252 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2253 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2254 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2255 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2256 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2257 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2258 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2259 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2260 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2261 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2262 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2263 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2264 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2266 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2268 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2269 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2271 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2273 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2275 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2276 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2278 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2280 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2281 without a trailing newline.
2283 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2284 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2286 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2289 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2293 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2295 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2297 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2298 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2299 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2300 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2302 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2304 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2305 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2306 be printed without leading spaces.
2308 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2309 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2314 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2315 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2316 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2318 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2320 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2321 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2323 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2324 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2326 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2327 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2329 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2331 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2333 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2335 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2336 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2338 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2340 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2342 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2343 byte offsets are specified.
2346 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2349 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2352 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2353 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2354 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2355 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2356 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2357 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2358 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2359 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2360 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2361 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2362 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2363 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2364 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2365 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2366 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2367 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2368 directory where M has write access.
2369 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2370 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2371 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2374 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2375 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2376 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2377 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2378 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2379 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2380 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2381 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2382 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2383 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2384 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2385 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2386 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2387 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2388 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2389 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2390 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2391 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2392 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2393 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2394 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2395 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2396 appeared one additional time.
2398 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2399 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2400 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2401 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2404 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2405 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2406 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2407 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2408 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2409 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2410 if there were more than 338.
2412 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2413 - false --help now exits nonzero
2416 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2417 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2418 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2419 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2422 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2423 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2424 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2425 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2426 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2429 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2430 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2431 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2432 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2433 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2434 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2435 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2438 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2439 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2440 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2441 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2442 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2443 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2445 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2446 under certain unusual conditions
2447 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2448 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2451 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2452 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2453 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2454 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2455 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2456 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2457 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2458 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2459 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2460 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2461 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2462 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2463 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2464 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2465 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2466 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2469 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2470 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2473 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2474 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2475 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2476 involving hard-linked directories
2477 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2478 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2479 character-special and block files
2482 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2483 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2484 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2485 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2486 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2487 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2488 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2489 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2490 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2492 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2493 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2494 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2495 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2496 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2497 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2498 specified on the command line.
2499 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2500 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2501 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2502 the first file untouched.
2503 * readlink: new program
2504 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2505 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2506 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2507 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2508 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2509 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2512 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2513 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2514 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2515 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2516 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2517 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2518 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2519 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2520 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2521 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2522 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2523 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2525 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2526 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2527 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2529 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2530 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2531 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2532 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2533 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2534 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2535 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2536 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2539 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2540 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2543 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2544 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2545 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2546 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2547 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2548 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2549 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2552 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2553 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2555 ========================================================================
2556 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2557 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2560 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2562 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2563 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2564 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2565 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2566 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2567 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2568 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2569 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2570 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2571 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2572 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2573 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2575 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2576 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2577 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2578 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2580 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2583 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2585 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2586 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2587 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2588 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2589 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2590 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2591 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2594 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2595 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2596 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2597 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2598 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2599 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2600 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2601 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2602 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2603 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2604 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2605 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2606 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2607 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2608 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2609 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2611 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2612 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2614 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2615 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2616 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2617 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2618 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2619 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2621 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2622 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2623 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2624 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2625 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2626 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2627 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2629 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2630 the source files in the following example:
2631 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2632 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2633 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2634 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2635 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2636 links between source files with --preserve=links
2637 * cp accepts new options:
2638 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2639 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2640 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2641 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2642 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2643 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2644 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2645 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2646 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2648 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2649 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2650 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2651 even though it's older than dest.
2652 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2653 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2654 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2655 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2656 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2658 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2659 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2660 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2661 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2662 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2663 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2664 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2666 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2667 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2668 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2670 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2671 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2672 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2673 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2674 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2675 This is the default.
2677 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2678 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2679 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2680 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2681 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2683 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2686 ========================================================================
2687 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2688 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2691 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2692 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2694 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2695 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2696 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2697 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2698 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2700 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2701 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2702 that specifies a non-directory
2705 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2706 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2707 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2708 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2709 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2710 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2711 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2712 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2713 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2714 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2715 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2716 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2717 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2718 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2719 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2720 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2721 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2722 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2723 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2724 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2725 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2726 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2727 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2728 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2730 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2731 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2732 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2734 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2736 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2737 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2739 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2740 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2741 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2742 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2743 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2745 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2746 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2747 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2748 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2749 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2751 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2753 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2754 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2755 * still more portability fixes
2756 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2757 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2759 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2761 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2763 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2765 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2766 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2767 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2768 there is any time remaining
2769 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2771 ========================================================================
2772 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2773 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2775 This package began as the union of the following:
2776 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2778 ========================================================================
2780 Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2782 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2783 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2784 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2785 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2786 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2787 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.