1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
8 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
9 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
10 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
11 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
13 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
14 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
16 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
17 reject file names invalid for that file system.
19 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
20 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
24 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
25 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
26 the same number of fields are output for each line.
28 ** Changes in behavior
30 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
31 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
32 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
35 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
39 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
40 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
41 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
44 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
48 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
49 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
51 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
52 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
54 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
55 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
57 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
58 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
59 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
60 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
62 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
63 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
65 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
66 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
67 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
69 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
71 ** Changes in behavior
73 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
74 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
75 to the number of available processors.
79 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
82 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
86 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
87 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
88 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
89 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
91 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
92 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
93 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
95 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
96 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
98 ** Changes in behavior
100 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
101 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
103 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
104 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
105 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
106 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
107 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
108 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
110 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
111 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
112 the same way as the others.
115 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
119 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
120 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
121 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
123 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
124 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
126 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
127 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
128 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
130 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
131 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
133 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
134 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
136 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
137 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
138 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
140 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
141 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
142 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
143 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
147 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
148 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
150 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
153 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
154 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
156 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
158 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
159 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
160 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
162 ** Changes in behavior
164 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
165 rather than its aliased target.
167 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
168 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
169 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
171 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
172 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
173 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
174 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
175 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
176 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
177 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
178 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
180 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
182 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
184 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
185 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
188 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
189 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
190 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
191 control like taskset for example.
193 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
195 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
196 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
197 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
198 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
199 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
200 includes %C when context information is available.
202 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
203 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
204 rather than a file system attribute.
206 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
207 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
208 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
209 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
211 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
212 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
213 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
215 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
216 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
217 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
220 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
224 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
225 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
227 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
229 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
230 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
232 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
233 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
234 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
235 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
237 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
238 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
239 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
243 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
244 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
246 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
247 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
248 duration after the initial signal was sent.
250 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
251 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
252 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
253 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
254 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
255 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
256 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
257 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
258 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
260 ** Changes in behavior
262 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
263 sequence when it would be a no-op.
265 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
266 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
269 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
273 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
274 of available processors, which may not have been the case
275 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
276 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
280 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
281 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
283 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
284 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
285 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
286 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
288 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
289 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
290 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
293 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
297 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
298 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
299 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
301 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
302 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
303 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
305 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
306 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
308 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
309 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
310 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
311 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
313 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
314 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
315 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
317 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
318 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
319 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
320 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
322 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
323 renamed-aside and then recreated.
324 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
326 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
327 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
328 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
329 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
331 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
332 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
333 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
335 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
336 processes will not intersperse their output.
337 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
340 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
344 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
345 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
347 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
348 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
350 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
351 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
352 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
353 the presence of the empty string argument.
354 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
356 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
357 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
358 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
359 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
361 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
362 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
364 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
365 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
366 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
368 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
369 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
370 and with a malicious user on the same system
371 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
372 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
375 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
379 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
380 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
381 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
383 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
384 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
385 offending directory and all "contents."
387 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
388 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
389 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
391 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
392 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
393 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
395 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
396 processes will not intersperse their output.
397 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
398 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
400 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
401 output the name of the file to stdout.
402 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
404 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
405 call fails with errno == EACCES.
406 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
408 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
409 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
412 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
413 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
414 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
416 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
417 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
418 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
419 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
420 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
421 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
423 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
424 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
425 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
426 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
428 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
429 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
431 ** Changes in behavior
433 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
434 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
435 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
436 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
437 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
439 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
440 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
441 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
442 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
444 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
446 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
447 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
448 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
449 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
450 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
454 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
458 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
459 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
461 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
462 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
464 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
465 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
466 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
468 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
469 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
472 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
476 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
477 when the source file doesn't have write access.
478 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
480 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
481 to accommodate leap seconds.
482 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
484 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
485 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
486 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
488 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
490 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
491 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
492 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
494 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
495 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
496 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
497 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
498 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
502 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
503 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
504 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
505 directory or a symlink to a directory.
507 ** Changes in behavior
509 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
510 environment variable is set.
512 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
513 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
514 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
518 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
519 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
520 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
521 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
523 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
524 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
525 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
526 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
530 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
531 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
532 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
534 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
535 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
536 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
537 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
538 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
539 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
542 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
543 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
546 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
550 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
551 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
552 and libraries tested at configure time.
553 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
555 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
556 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
558 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
559 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
561 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
562 printing a summary to stderr.
563 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
565 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
566 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
567 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
569 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
570 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
572 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
573 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
574 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
575 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
577 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
578 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
579 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
580 which is relatively unusual.
581 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
583 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
584 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
585 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
586 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
587 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
588 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
589 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
593 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
594 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
595 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
596 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
597 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
601 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
602 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
604 ** Changes in behavior
606 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
607 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
608 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
609 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
610 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
613 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
617 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
618 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
620 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
621 before data copying has started.
623 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
624 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
626 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
627 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
628 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
629 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
631 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
632 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
633 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
634 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
636 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
641 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
642 for its standard streams.
644 ** Changes in behavior
646 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
647 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
648 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
649 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
650 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
651 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
653 ** Deprecated options
655 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
656 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
660 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
662 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
663 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
666 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
668 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
669 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
671 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
672 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
675 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
679 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
680 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
681 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
682 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
684 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
685 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
686 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
687 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
688 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
693 make check: two tests have been corrected
697 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
698 inherited from gnulib.
701 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
705 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
706 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
707 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
708 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
710 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
711 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
713 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
715 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
716 systems without xattr support.
718 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
719 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
720 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
722 ** Changes in behavior
724 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
725 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
726 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
727 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
729 ** Improved robustness
731 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
732 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
733 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
734 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
735 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
736 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
737 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
738 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
739 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
743 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
744 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
746 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
747 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
748 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
749 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
750 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
753 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
757 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
758 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
759 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
763 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
764 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
765 data was read, or on process exit.
766 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
768 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
769 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
770 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
771 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
773 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
774 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
775 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
776 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
778 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
779 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
781 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
782 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
784 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
785 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
786 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
788 ** Changes in behavior
790 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
791 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
792 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
794 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
795 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
797 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
798 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
799 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
802 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
806 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
808 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
809 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
810 install: Never copies xattrs
812 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
813 from overwriting any existing destination file
815 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
816 mode where this feature is available.
818 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
819 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
820 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
821 do not modify the destination at all.
823 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
825 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
829 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
830 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
832 cp uses much less memory in some situations
834 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
835 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
837 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
838 processing the first file name
840 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
841 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
842 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
843 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
845 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
846 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
848 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
849 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
852 ** Changes in behavior
854 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
855 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
857 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
858 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
859 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
861 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
862 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
864 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
866 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
867 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
868 is still marked with a '+'.
871 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
875 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
876 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
880 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
881 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
882 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
883 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
884 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
885 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
887 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
888 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
890 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
891 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
893 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
895 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
896 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
897 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
899 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
900 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
902 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
903 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
904 used to factor large numbers.
906 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
909 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
911 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
913 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
914 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
916 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
917 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
918 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
919 maximum command-line (argv) length.
921 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
922 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
923 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
925 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
926 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
930 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
932 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
933 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
935 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
936 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
938 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
940 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
941 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
945 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
946 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
947 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
949 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
951 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
952 no matter how many files are in a given directory
954 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
955 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
956 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
958 ** Changes in behavior
960 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
961 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
964 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
968 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
970 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
971 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
972 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
974 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
975 with no USERNAME argument.
977 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
978 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
979 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
981 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
982 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
983 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
984 number of fields for some inputs.
986 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
987 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
989 ** Changes in behavior
991 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
992 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
995 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
999 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1001 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1002 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1003 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1004 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1006 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1007 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1009 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1010 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1012 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1013 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1015 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1016 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1017 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1018 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1020 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1021 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1022 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1023 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1024 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1025 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1027 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1028 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1030 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1031 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1032 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1034 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1035 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1037 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1038 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1040 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1041 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1042 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1043 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1045 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1046 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1048 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1049 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1051 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1052 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1053 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1057 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1058 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1060 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1061 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1062 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1063 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1067 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1068 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1070 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1072 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1076 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1077 which have negative errno values.
1081 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1085 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1089 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1090 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1093 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1097 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1098 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1099 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1101 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1102 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1103 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1104 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1108 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1109 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1110 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1111 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1114 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1118 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1120 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1121 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1122 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1125 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1129 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1130 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1132 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1134 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1136 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1138 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1142 ** Changes in behavior
1144 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1145 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1147 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1148 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1150 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1151 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1152 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1156 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1157 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1158 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1159 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1160 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1161 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1162 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1163 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1164 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1165 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1166 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1168 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1169 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1170 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1173 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1176 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1177 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1178 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1180 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1181 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1182 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1185 ** New build options
1187 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1188 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1189 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1190 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1192 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1193 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1194 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1195 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1196 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1197 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1198 of "make check" fail.
1200 ** Remove deprecated options
1202 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1203 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1204 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1205 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1206 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1208 ** Improved robustness
1210 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1211 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1212 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1213 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1214 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1215 loss of the contents of a/f.
1217 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1218 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1222 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1223 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1224 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1226 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1227 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1228 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1229 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1231 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1232 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1233 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1234 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1235 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1236 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1237 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1238 destination is a symlink.
1240 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1242 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1243 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1245 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1246 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1248 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1250 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1251 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1253 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1254 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1256 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1259 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1260 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1262 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1263 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1265 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1266 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1267 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1268 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1270 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1271 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1272 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1274 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1275 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1276 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1278 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1279 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1280 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1281 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1283 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1284 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1285 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1287 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1288 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1290 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1291 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1293 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1295 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1296 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1297 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1299 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1300 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1302 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1303 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1305 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1306 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1308 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1309 [present in the original version]
1312 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1316 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1318 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1319 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1320 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1322 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1323 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1325 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1329 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1330 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1332 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1333 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1335 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1336 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1338 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1339 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1340 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1341 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1342 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1343 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1345 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1346 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1349 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1350 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1352 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1355 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1356 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1357 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1359 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1360 directory is unreadable.
1362 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1363 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1364 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1366 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1367 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1368 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1369 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1370 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1373 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1374 Before it would print nothing.
1376 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1378 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1379 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1380 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1381 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1382 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1383 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1384 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1385 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1387 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1391 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1392 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1393 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1395 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1396 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1397 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1398 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1401 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1405 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1406 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1407 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1408 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1409 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1410 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1411 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1413 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1414 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1415 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1416 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1417 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1418 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1419 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1420 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1422 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1423 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1424 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1427 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1431 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1432 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1434 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1435 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1436 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1438 ** Improved robustness
1440 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1441 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1442 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1445 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1449 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1450 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1451 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1452 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1453 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1455 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1459 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1462 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1466 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1467 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1468 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1469 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1471 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1472 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1474 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1475 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1476 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1479 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1481 ** Improved robustness
1483 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1484 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1486 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1487 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1488 or NFS-mounted partition.
1490 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1491 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1495 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1496 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1497 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1498 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1499 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1500 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1502 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1503 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1505 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1506 or neglect to report file removal.
1508 For the "groups" command:
1510 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1511 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1513 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1515 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1517 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1521 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1522 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1525 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1527 ** Changes in behavior
1529 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1530 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1531 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1532 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1534 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1535 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1536 a final `./' or `../' component.
1538 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1539 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1540 this only for pipes.
1542 ** Infrastructure changes
1544 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1545 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1546 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1547 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1551 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1552 name is "." or "..".
1554 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1555 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1556 dirent.d_type support.
1558 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1559 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1561 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1562 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1563 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1564 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1567 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1569 ** Changes in behavior
1571 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1575 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1576 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1580 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1581 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1582 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1584 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1585 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1587 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1588 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1590 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1592 ** Improved robustness
1594 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1595 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1596 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1598 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1599 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1602 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1603 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1605 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1606 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1608 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1609 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1611 ** Changes in behavior
1613 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1614 where the two are distinct.
1616 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1617 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1618 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1619 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1620 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1621 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1622 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1623 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1624 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1625 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1626 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1627 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1628 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1629 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1630 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1631 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1632 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1634 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1635 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1636 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1638 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1639 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1640 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1641 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1644 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1645 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1649 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1650 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1651 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1652 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1654 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1655 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1656 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1658 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1659 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1660 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1661 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1662 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1665 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1666 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1668 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1669 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1670 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1671 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1673 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1674 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1675 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1677 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1678 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1679 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1680 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1682 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1683 and sticky) with the -m option.
1685 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1686 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1687 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1688 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1689 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1691 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1692 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1694 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1698 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1699 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1700 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1701 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1703 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1705 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1707 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1708 silently ignoring one of them.
1710 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1711 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1712 containing this change was 5.92.
1714 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1715 automatically newline terminated.
1717 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1718 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1719 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1720 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1723 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1724 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1725 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1728 ** Scheduled for removal
1730 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1731 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1733 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1734 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1735 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1736 command to unlink a directory.
1738 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1739 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1740 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1741 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1745 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1746 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1747 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1748 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1749 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1750 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1754 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1755 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1757 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1759 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1760 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1761 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1763 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1764 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1767 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1768 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1770 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1771 list directories before files.
1773 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1774 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1775 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1776 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1779 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1781 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1783 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1784 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1785 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1787 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1788 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1792 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1793 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1794 usually printing nothing.
1796 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1798 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1799 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1800 them with hard-linked directories.
1802 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1803 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1804 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1806 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1807 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1808 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1810 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1813 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1814 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1816 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1817 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1819 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1820 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1822 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1823 all command-line arguments.
1825 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1827 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1829 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1830 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1832 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1834 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1835 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1836 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1837 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1838 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1840 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1841 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1843 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1844 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1845 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1846 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1848 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1850 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1854 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1855 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1857 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1858 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1860 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1861 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1863 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1864 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1866 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1867 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1869 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1871 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1872 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1873 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1876 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1878 ** Build-related bug fixes
1880 installing .mo files would fail
1883 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1887 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1889 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1892 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1896 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1897 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1901 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1903 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1904 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1906 ** Deprecated options
1908 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1909 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1911 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1915 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1917 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1918 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1919 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1920 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1922 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1925 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1931 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1936 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1938 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1940 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1941 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1942 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1944 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1945 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1946 problematic usages. These include:
1948 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1949 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1950 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1951 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1952 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1953 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1954 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1955 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1956 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1958 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1959 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1961 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1962 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1963 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1964 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1966 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1967 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1968 between binary and text files.
1970 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1974 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1978 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1979 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1981 head tac tail tee tr
1982 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1984 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1985 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1987 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1988 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1989 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1991 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1993 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1995 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1996 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1997 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2001 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2003 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2004 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2006 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2007 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2008 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2012 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2013 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2017 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2018 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2019 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2023 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2024 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2028 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2030 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2032 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2036 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2037 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2038 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2040 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2041 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2042 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2043 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2044 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2046 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2050 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2051 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2052 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2054 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2056 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2057 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2058 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2059 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2061 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2063 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2064 rather than silently wrapping around.
2066 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2067 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2069 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2070 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2072 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2073 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2074 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2075 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2077 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2079 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2081 ** Improved robustness
2083 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2084 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2085 no matter how large the result.
2087 ** Improved portability
2089 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2090 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2092 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2094 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2095 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2096 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2098 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2099 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2103 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2104 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2106 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2108 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2109 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2110 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2111 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2113 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2114 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2116 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2117 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2118 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2120 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2122 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2123 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2125 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2126 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2128 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2130 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2131 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2133 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2134 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2136 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2137 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2138 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2140 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2142 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2144 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2148 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2150 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2151 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2152 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2154 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2155 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2157 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2158 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2159 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2161 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2162 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2164 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2165 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2166 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2167 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2169 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2170 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2172 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2173 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2174 the file system does not support it.
2176 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2178 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2179 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2181 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2183 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2184 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2186 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2187 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2188 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2189 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2191 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2192 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2195 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2196 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2197 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2198 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2200 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2201 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2202 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2203 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2205 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2206 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2208 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2210 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2211 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2212 reporting incorrect results.
2216 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2217 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2219 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2222 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2224 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2225 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2227 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2228 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2230 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2233 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2234 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2235 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2236 the file name does not look like a page range.
2238 printf has several changes:
2240 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2241 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2243 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2244 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2245 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2247 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2248 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2251 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2252 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2254 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2255 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2257 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2259 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2260 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2262 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2264 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2266 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2267 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2268 when first encountering the directory.
2272 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2273 output; POSIX requires this.
2275 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2276 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2278 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2280 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2281 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2283 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2284 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2286 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2287 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2288 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2289 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2290 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2291 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2292 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2294 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2295 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2296 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2298 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2299 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2301 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2303 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2305 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2306 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2307 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2308 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2310 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2314 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2315 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2316 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2317 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2318 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2320 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2321 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2322 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2324 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2325 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2327 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2328 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2330 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2331 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2332 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2333 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2334 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2336 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2337 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2339 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2340 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2342 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2344 nocreat do not create the output file
2345 excl fail if the output file already exists
2346 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2347 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2349 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2351 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2352 direct use direct I/O for data
2353 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2354 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2355 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2356 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2357 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2359 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2361 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2362 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2365 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2366 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2367 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2368 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2369 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2370 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2372 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2373 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2375 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2378 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2380 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2382 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2383 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2385 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2386 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2387 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2389 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2390 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2391 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2393 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2395 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2396 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2398 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2399 for compatibility with bash.
2401 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2403 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2404 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2405 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2406 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2408 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2409 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2411 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2412 ls supports TABSIZE.
2413 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2414 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2415 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2417 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2420 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2422 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2423 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2424 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2425 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2426 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2427 an offset, not as a file name.
2429 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2430 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2432 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2433 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2435 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2436 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2438 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2439 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2440 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2442 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2443 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2445 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2446 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2450 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2452 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2454 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2458 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2459 or more arguments between partitions.
2461 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2462 holes in the destination.
2464 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2465 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2466 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2467 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2468 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2469 terminates immediately.
2471 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2473 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2475 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2476 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2477 not the empty string.
2479 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2480 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2484 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2485 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2486 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2489 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2496 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2500 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2501 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2503 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2504 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2506 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2507 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2508 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2511 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2515 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2516 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2518 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2519 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2521 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2522 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2523 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2525 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2527 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2530 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2532 ** Configuration option
2534 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2535 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2539 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2540 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2544 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2545 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2546 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2549 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2550 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2551 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2552 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2553 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2554 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2555 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2558 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2562 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2563 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2564 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2566 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2567 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2569 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2571 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2572 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2573 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2574 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2576 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2578 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2579 not just the ones that reference directories
2581 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2582 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2584 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2585 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2586 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2588 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2589 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2590 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2591 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2592 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2593 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2595 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2600 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2601 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2603 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2605 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2607 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2609 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2610 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2612 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2613 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2615 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2617 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2621 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2623 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2625 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2626 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2627 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2628 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2629 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2631 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2632 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2634 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2635 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2637 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2638 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2640 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2641 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2642 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2646 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2647 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2648 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2649 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2650 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2651 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2652 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2653 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2654 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2655 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2656 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2657 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2658 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2659 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2661 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2663 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2664 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2666 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2668 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2670 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2671 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2673 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2675 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2676 without a trailing newline.
2678 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2679 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2681 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2684 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2688 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2690 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2692 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2693 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2694 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2695 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2697 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2699 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2700 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2701 be printed without leading spaces.
2703 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2704 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2709 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2710 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2711 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2713 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2715 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2716 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2718 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2719 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2721 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2722 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2724 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2726 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2728 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2730 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2731 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2733 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2735 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2737 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2738 byte offsets are specified.
2741 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2744 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2747 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2748 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2749 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2750 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2751 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2752 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2753 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2754 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2755 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2756 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2757 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2758 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2759 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2760 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2761 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2762 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2763 directory where M has write access.
2764 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2765 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2766 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2769 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2770 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2771 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2772 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2773 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2774 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2775 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2776 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2777 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2778 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2779 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2780 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2781 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2782 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2783 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2784 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2785 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2786 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2787 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2788 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2789 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2790 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2791 appeared one additional time.
2793 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2794 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2795 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2796 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2799 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2800 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2801 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2802 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2803 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2804 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2805 if there were more than 338.
2807 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2808 - false --help now exits nonzero
2811 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2812 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2813 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2814 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2817 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2818 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2819 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2820 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2821 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2824 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2825 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2826 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2827 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2828 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2829 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2830 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2833 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2834 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2835 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2836 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2837 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2838 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2840 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2841 under certain unusual conditions
2842 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2843 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2846 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2847 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2848 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2849 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2850 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2851 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2852 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2853 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2854 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2855 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2856 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2857 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2858 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2859 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2860 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2861 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2864 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2865 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2868 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2869 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2870 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2871 involving hard-linked directories
2872 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2873 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2874 character-special and block files
2877 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2878 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2879 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2880 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2881 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2882 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2883 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2884 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2885 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2887 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2888 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2889 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2890 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2891 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2892 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2893 specified on the command line.
2894 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2895 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2896 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2897 the first file untouched.
2898 * readlink: new program
2899 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2900 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2901 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2902 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2903 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2904 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2907 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2908 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2909 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2910 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2911 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2912 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2913 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2914 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2915 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2916 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2917 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2918 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2920 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2921 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2922 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2924 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2925 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2926 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2927 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2928 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2929 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2930 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2931 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2934 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2935 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2938 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2939 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2940 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2941 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2942 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2943 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2944 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2947 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2948 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2950 ========================================================================
2951 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2952 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2955 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2957 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2958 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2959 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2960 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2961 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2962 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2963 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2964 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2965 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2966 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2967 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2968 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2970 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2971 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2972 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2973 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2975 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2978 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2980 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2981 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2982 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2983 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2984 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2985 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2986 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2989 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2990 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2991 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2992 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2993 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2994 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2995 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2996 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2997 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2998 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2999 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
3000 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
3001 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3002 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3003 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3004 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3006 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3007 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3009 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3010 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3011 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3012 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3013 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3014 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3016 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3017 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3018 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3019 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3020 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3021 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3022 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3024 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3025 the source files in the following example:
3026 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3027 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3028 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3029 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3030 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3031 links between source files with --preserve=links
3032 * cp accepts new options:
3033 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3034 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3035 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3036 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3037 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3038 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3039 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3040 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
3041 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3043 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3044 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3045 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3046 even though it's older than dest.
3047 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3048 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3049 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3050 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3051 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3053 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3054 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3055 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3056 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3057 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3058 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3059 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3061 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3062 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3063 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3065 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3066 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3067 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3068 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3069 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3070 This is the default.
3072 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3073 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3074 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3075 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3076 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3078 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3081 ========================================================================
3082 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3083 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3086 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3087 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3089 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3090 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3091 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3092 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3093 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3095 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3096 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3097 that specifies a non-directory
3100 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3101 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3102 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3103 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3104 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3105 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3106 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3107 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3108 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3109 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3110 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3111 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3112 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3113 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3114 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3115 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3116 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3117 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3118 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3119 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3120 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3121 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3122 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3123 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3125 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3126 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3127 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3129 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3131 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3132 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3134 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3135 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3136 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3137 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3138 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3140 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3141 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3142 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3143 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3144 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3146 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3148 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3149 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3150 * still more portability fixes
3151 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3152 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3154 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3156 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3158 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3160 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3161 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3162 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3163 there is any time remaining
3164 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3166 ========================================================================
3167 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3168 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3170 This package began as the union of the following:
3171 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3173 ========================================================================
3175 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3177 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3178 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3179 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3180 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3181 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3182 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.