1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 df now processes the mount list correctly in the presence of unstatable
8 mount points. Previously it may have failed to output some mount points.
9 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.21]
11 install now removes the target file if the strip program failed for any
12 reason. Before, that file was left behind, sometimes even with wrong
14 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
16 ln --relative now updates existing symlinks correctly. Previously it based
17 the relative link on the dereferenced path of an existing link.
18 [This bug was introduced when --relative was added in coreutils-8.16.]
20 mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod now work better when creating a file in a directory
21 with a default ACL whose umask disagrees with the process's umask, on a
22 system such as GNU/Linux where directory ACL umasks override process umasks.
23 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
25 mv will now replace empty directories in the destination with directories
26 from the source, when copying across file systems.
27 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
29 od -wN with N larger than 64K on a system with 32-bit size_t would
30 print approximately 2*N bytes of extraneous padding.
31 [Bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
33 tail --retry -f now waits for the files specified to appear. Before, tail
34 would immediately exit when such a file is inaccessible during the initial
36 [This bug was introduced when inotify support was added in coreutils-7.5]
40 du accepts a new option: --inodes to show the number of inodes instead
43 id and ls with -Z report the SMACK security context where available.
44 mkdir, mkfifo and mknod with -Z set the SMACK context where available.
46 join accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort,uniq
47 option of the same name, this makes join consume and produce NUL-terminated
48 lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
50 uniq accepts a new option: --group to print all items, while separating
51 unique groups with empty lines.
53 csplit accepts a new option: --suppressed-matched, to elide the lines
54 used to identify the split points.
56 shuf accepts a new option: --repetitions (-r), to allow repetitions
57 of input items in the permuted output.
59 ** Changes in behavior
61 dd status=none now suppresses all non fatal diagnostic messages,
62 not just the transfer counts.
64 stdbuf now requires at least one buffering mode option to be specified,
65 as per the documented interface.
69 stat and tail work better with EFIVARFS, EXOFS, F2FS, SNFS and UBIFS.
70 stat -f --format=%T now reports the file system type, and tail -f now uses
71 inotify for files on those file systems, rather than the default (for unknown
72 file system types) of issuing a warning and reverting to polling.
74 shuf outputs subsets of large inputs much more efficiently.
75 Reservoir sampling is used to limit memory usage based on the number of
76 outputs, rather than the number of inputs.
78 split --line-bytes=SIZE, now only allocates memory as needed rather
79 than allocating SIZE bytes at program start.
83 factor now builds on aarch64 based systems [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20]
86 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.21 (2013-02-14) [stable]
90 numfmt: reformat numbers
94 df now accepts the --output[=FIELD_LIST] option to define the list of columns
95 to include in the output, or all available columns if the FIELD_LIST is
96 omitted. Note this enables df to output both block and inode fields together.
98 du now accepts the --threshold=SIZE option to restrict the output to entries
99 with such a minimum SIZE (or a maximum SIZE if it is negative).
100 du recognizes -t SIZE as equivalent, for compatibility with FreeBSD.
104 cp --no-preserve=mode now no longer exits non-zero.
105 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20]
107 cut with a range like "N-" no longer allocates N/8 bytes. That buffer
108 would never be used, and allocation failure could cause cut to fail.
109 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
111 cut no longer accepts the invalid range 0-, which made it print empty lines.
112 Instead, cut now fails and emits an appropriate diagnostic.
113 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
115 cut now handles overlapping to-EOL ranges properly. Before, it would
116 interpret "-b2-,3-" like "-b3-". Now it's treated like "-b2-".
117 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
119 cut no longer prints extraneous delimiters when a to-EOL range subsumes
120 another range. Before, "echo 123|cut --output-delim=: -b2-,3" would print
121 "2:3". Now it prints "23". [bug introduced in 5.3.0]
123 cut -f no longer inspects input line N+1 before fully outputting line N,
124 which avoids delayed output for intermittent input.
125 [bug introduced in TEXTUTILS-1_8b]
127 factor no longer loops infinitely on 32 bit powerpc or sparc systems.
128 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20]
130 install -m M SOURCE DEST no longer has a race condition where DEST's
131 permissions are temporarily derived from SOURCE instead of from M.
133 pr -n no longer crashes when passed values >= 32. Also, line numbers are
134 consistently padded with spaces, rather than with zeros for certain widths.
135 [bug introduced in TEXTUTILS-1_22i]
137 seq -w ensures that for numbers input in scientific notation,
138 the output numbers are properly aligned and of the correct width.
139 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
141 seq -w ensures correct alignment when the step value includes a precision
142 while the start value does not, and the number sequence narrows.
143 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
145 seq -s no longer prints an erroneous newline after the first number, and
146 outputs a newline after the last number rather than a trailing separator.
147 Also seq no longer ignores a specified step value when the end value is 1.
148 [bugs introduced in coreutils-8.20]
150 timeout now ensures that blocking of ALRM signals is not inherited from
151 its parent, which would cause timeouts to be ignored.
152 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
154 ** Changes in behavior
156 df --total now prints '-' into the target column (mount point) of the
157 summary line, accommodating the --output option where the target field
158 can be in any column. If there is no source column, then df prints
159 'total' in the target column.
161 df now properly outputs file system information with bind mounts present on
162 the system by skipping duplicate entries (identified by the device number).
163 Consequently, df also elides the early-boot pseudo file system type "rootfs".
165 nl no longer supports the --page-increment option, which has been
166 deprecated since coreutils-7.5. Use --line-increment instead.
170 readlink now supports multiple arguments, and a complementary
171 -z, --zero option to delimit output items with the NUL character.
173 stat and tail now know about CEPH. stat -f --format=%T now reports the file
174 system type, and tail -f uses polling for files on CEPH file systems.
176 stty now supports configuring DTR/DSR hardware flow control where available.
180 Perl is now more of a prerequisite. It has long been required in order
181 to run (not skip) a significant percentage of the tests. Now, it is
182 also required in order to generate proper man pages, via help2man. The
183 generated man/*.1 man pages are no longer distributed. Building without
184 perl, you would create stub man pages. Thus, while perl is not an
185 official prerequisite (build and "make check" will still succeed), any
186 resulting man pages would be inferior. In addition, this fixes a bug
187 in distributed (not from clone) Makefile.in that could cause parallel
188 build failure when building from modified sources, as is common practice
189 for a patched distribution package.
191 factor now builds on x86_64 with x32 ABI, 32 bit MIPS, and all HPPA systems,
192 by avoiding incompatible asm. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20]
194 A root-only test predicate would always fail. Its job was to determine
195 whether our dummy user, $NON_ROOT_USERNAME, was able to run binaries from
196 the build directory. As a result, all dependent tests were always skipped.
197 Now, those tests may be run once again. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20]
200 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.20 (2012-10-23) [stable]
204 dd now accepts 'status=none' to suppress all informational output.
206 md5sum now accepts the --tag option to print BSD-style output with GNU
207 file name escaping. This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha256sum,
208 sha384sum and sha512sum.
212 cp could read from freed memory and could even make corrupt copies.
213 This could happen with a very fragmented and sparse input file,
214 on GNU/Linux file systems supporting fiemap extent scanning.
215 This bug also affects mv when it resorts to copying, and install.
216 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.11]
218 cp --no-preserve=mode now no longer preserves the original file's
219 permissions but correctly sets mode specified by 0666 & ~umask
221 du no longer emits a "disk-corrupted"-style diagnostic when it detects
222 a directory cycle that is due to a bind-mounted directory. Instead,
223 it detects this precise type of cycle, diagnoses it as such and
224 eventually exits nonzero.
226 factor (when using gmp) would mistakenly declare some composite numbers
227 to be prime, e.g., 465658903, 2242724851, 6635692801 and many more.
228 The fix makes factor somewhat slower (~25%) for ranges of consecutive
229 numbers, and up to 8 times slower for some worst-case individual numbers.
230 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0, with GNU MP support]
232 ls now correctly colors dangling symlinks when listing their containing
233 directories, with orphaned symlink coloring disabled in LS_COLORS.
234 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.14]
236 rm -i -d now prompts the user then removes an empty directory, rather
237 than ignoring the -d option and failing with an 'Is a directory' error.
238 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.19, with the addition of --dir (-d)]
240 rm -r S/ (where S is a symlink-to-directory) no longer gives the invalid
241 "Too many levels of symbolic links" diagnostic.
242 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
244 seq now handles arbitrarily long non-negative whole numbers when the
245 increment is 1 and when no format-changing option is specified.
246 Before, this would infloop:
247 b=100000000000000000000; seq $b $b
248 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
250 ** Changes in behavior
252 nproc now diagnoses with an error, non option command line parameters.
256 factor's core has been rewritten for speed and increased range.
257 It can now factor numbers up to 2^128, even without GMP support.
258 Its speed is from a few times better (for small numbers) to over
259 10,000 times better (just below 2^64). The new code also runs a
260 deterministic primality test for each prime factor, not just a
263 seq is now up to 70 times faster than it was in coreutils-8.19 and prior,
264 but only with non-negative whole numbers, an increment of 1, and no
265 format-changing options.
267 stat and tail know about ZFS, VZFS and VMHGFS. stat -f --format=%T now
268 reports the file system type, and tail -f now uses inotify for files on
269 ZFS and VZFS file systems, rather than the default (for unknown file
270 system types) of issuing a warning and reverting to polling. tail -f
271 still uses polling for files on VMHGFS file systems.
275 root-only tests now check for permissions of our dummy user,
276 $NON_ROOT_USERNAME, before trying to run binaries from the build directory.
277 Before, we would get hard-to-diagnose reports of failing root-only tests.
278 Now, those tests are skipped with a useful diagnostic when the root tests
279 are run without following the instructions in README.
281 We now build most directories using non-recursive make rules. I.e.,
282 rather than running make in man/, lib/, src/, tests/, instead, the top
283 level Makefile.am includes a $dir/local.mk that describes how to build
284 the targets in the corresponding directory. Two directories remain
285 unconverted: po/, gnulib-tests/. One nice side-effect is that the more
286 accurate dependencies have eliminated a nagging occasional failure that
287 was seen when running parallel "make syntax-check".
290 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.19 (2012-08-20) [stable]
294 df now fails when the list of mounted file systems (/etc/mtab) cannot
295 be read, yet the file system type information is needed to process
296 certain options like -a, -l, -t and -x.
297 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
299 sort -u could fail to output one or more result lines.
300 For example, this command would fail to print "1":
301 (yes 7 | head -11; echo 1) | sort --p=1 -S32b -u
302 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
304 sort -u could read freed memory.
305 For example, this evokes a read from freed memory:
306 perl -le 'print "a\n"."0"x900'|valgrind sort --p=1 -S32b -u>/dev/null
307 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
311 rm now accepts the --dir (-d) option which makes it remove empty directories.
312 Since removing empty directories is relatively safe, this option can be
313 used as a part of the alias rm='rm --dir'. This improves compatibility
314 with Mac OS X and BSD systems which also honor the -d option.
317 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.18 (2012-08-12) [stable]
321 cksum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
322 processes will not intersperse their output.
323 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
325 date -d "$(printf '\xb0')" would print 00:00:00 with today's date
326 rather than diagnosing the invalid input. Now it reports this:
327 date: invalid date '\260'
328 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
330 df no longer outputs control characters present in the mount point name.
331 Such characters are replaced with '?', so for example, scripts consuming
332 lines output by df, can work reliably.
333 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
335 df --total now exits with an appropriate diagnostic and error code, when
336 file system --type options do not lead to a processed file system.
337 [This bug dates back to when --total was added in coreutils-7.0]
339 head --lines=-N (-n-N) now resets the read pointer of a seekable input file.
340 This means that "head -n-3" no longer consumes all of its input, and lines
341 not output by head may be processed by other programs. For example, this
342 command now prints the final line, 2, while before it would print nothing:
343 seq 2 > k; (head -n-1 > /dev/null; cat) < k
344 [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
346 ls --color would mis-color relative-named symlinks in /
347 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.17]
349 split now ensures it doesn't overwrite the input file with generated output.
350 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
352 stat and df now report the correct file system usage,
353 in all situations on GNU/Linux, by correctly determining the block size.
354 [df bug since coreutils-5.0.91, stat bug since the initial implementation]
356 tail -f no longer tries to use inotify on AUFS or PanFS file systems
357 [you might say this was introduced in coreutils-7.5, along with inotify
358 support, but even now, its magic number isn't in the usual place.]
362 stat -f recognizes the new remote file system types: aufs, panfs.
364 ** Changes in behavior
366 su: this program has been removed. We stopped installing "su" by
367 default with the release of coreutils-6.9.90 on 2007-12-01. Now,
368 that the util-linux package has the union of the Suse and Fedora
369 patches as well as enough support to build on the Hurd, we no longer
370 have any reason to include it here.
374 sort avoids redundant processing in the presence of inaccessible inputs,
375 or unwritable output. Sort now diagnoses certain errors at start-up,
376 rather than after potentially expensive processing.
378 sort now allocates no more than 75% of physical memory by default,
379 to better share system resources, and thus operate more efficiently.
380 [The default max memory usage changed from 50% to 100% in coreutils-8.16]
383 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.17 (2012-05-10) [stable]
387 id and groups, when invoked with no user name argument, would print
388 the default group ID listed in the password database, and sometimes
389 that ID would be neither real nor effective. For example, when run
390 set-GID, or in a session for which the default group has just been
391 changed, the new group ID would be listed, even though it is not
392 yet effective. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
394 cp S D is no longer subject to a race: if an existing D were removed
395 between the initial stat and subsequent open-without-O_CREATE, cp would
396 fail with a confusing diagnostic saying that the destination, D, was not
397 found. Now, in this unusual case, it retries the open (but with O_CREATE),
398 and hence usually succeeds. With NFS attribute caching, the condition
399 was particularly easy to trigger, since there, the removal of D could
400 precede the initial stat. [This bug was present in "the beginning".]
402 split --number=C /dev/null no longer appears to infloop on GNU/Hurd
403 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
405 stat no longer reports a negative file size as a huge positive number.
406 [bug present since 'stat' was introduced in fileutils-4.1.9]
410 split and truncate now allow any seekable files in situations where
411 the file size is needed, instead of insisting on regular files.
413 fmt now accepts the --goal=WIDTH (-g) option.
415 stat -f recognizes new file system types: bdevfs, inodefs, qnx6
417 ** Changes in behavior
419 cp,mv,install,cat,split: now read and write a minimum of 64KiB at a time.
420 This was previously 32KiB and increasing to 64KiB was seen to increase
421 throughput by about 10% when reading cached files on 64 bit GNU/Linux.
423 cp --attributes-only no longer truncates any existing destination file,
424 allowing for more general copying of attributes from one file to another.
427 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.16 (2012-03-26) [stable]
431 As a GNU extension, 'chmod', 'mkdir', and 'install' now accept operators
432 '-', '+', '=' followed by octal modes; for example, 'chmod +40 FOO' enables
433 and 'chmod -40 FOO' disables FOO's group-read permissions. Operator
434 numeric modes can be combined with symbolic modes by separating them with
435 commas; for example, =0,u+r clears all permissions except for enabling
436 user-read permissions. Unlike ordinary numeric modes, operator numeric
437 modes do not preserve directory setuid and setgid bits; for example,
438 'chmod =0 FOO' clears all of FOO's permissions, including setuid and setgid.
440 Also, ordinary numeric modes with five or more digits no longer preserve
441 setuid and setgid bits, so that 'chmod 00755 FOO' now clears FOO's setuid
442 and setgid bits. This allows scripts to be portable to other systems which
443 lack the GNU extension mentioned previously, and where ordinary numeric
444 modes do not preserve directory setuid and setgid bits.
446 dd now accepts the count_bytes, skip_bytes iflags and the seek_bytes
447 oflag, to more easily allow processing portions of a file.
449 dd now accepts the conv=sparse flag to attempt to create sparse
450 output, by seeking rather than writing to the output file.
452 ln now accepts the --relative option, to generate a relative
453 symbolic link to a target, irrespective of how the target is specified.
455 split now accepts an optional "from" argument to --numeric-suffixes,
456 which changes the start number from the default of 0.
458 split now accepts the --additional-suffix option, to append an
459 additional static suffix to output file names.
461 basename now supports the -a and -s options, which allow processing
462 of more than one argument at a time. Also the complementary
463 -z option was added to delimit output items with the NUL character.
465 dirname now supports more than one argument. Also the complementary
466 -z option was added to delimit output items with the NUL character.
470 du --one-file-system (-x) would ignore any non-directory specified on
471 the command line. For example, "touch f; du -x f" would print nothing.
472 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.15]
474 mv now lets you move a symlink onto a same-inode destination file that
475 has two or more hard links. Before, it would reject that, saying that
476 they are the same, implicitly warning you that the move would result in
477 data loss. In this unusual case, when not moving the symlink onto its
478 referent, there is no risk of data loss, since the symlink will
479 typically still point to one of the hard links.
481 "mv A B" could succeed, yet A would remain. This would happen only when
482 both A and B were hard links to the same symlink, and with a kernel for
483 which rename("A","B") does nothing and returns 0 (POSIX mandates this
484 surprising rename no-op behavior). Now, mv handles this case by skipping
485 the usually-useless rename and simply unlinking A.
487 realpath no longer mishandles a root directory. This was most
488 noticeable on platforms where // is a different directory than /,
489 but could also be observed with --relative-base=/ or
490 --relative-to=/. [bug since the beginning, in 8.15]
494 ls can be much more efficient, especially with large directories on file
495 systems for which getfilecon-, ACL-check- and XATTR-check-induced syscalls
496 fail with ENOTSUP or similar.
498 'realpath --relative-base=dir' in isolation now implies '--relative-to=dir'
499 instead of causing a usage failure.
501 split now supports an unlimited number of split files as default behavior.
504 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.15 (2012-01-06) [stable]
508 realpath: print resolved file names.
512 du -x no longer counts root directories of other file systems.
513 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
515 ls --color many-entry-directory was uninterruptible for too long
516 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.2.1]
518 ls's -k option no longer affects how ls -l outputs file sizes.
519 It now affects only the per-directory block counts written by -l,
520 and the sizes written by -s. This is for compatibility with BSD
521 and with POSIX 2008. Because -k is no longer equivalent to
522 --block-size=1KiB, a new long option --kibibyte stands for -k.
523 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.4]
525 ls -l would leak a little memory (security context string) for each
526 nonempty directory listed on the command line, when using SELinux.
527 [bug probably introduced in coreutils-6.10 with SELinux support]
529 rm -rf DIR would fail with "Device or resource busy" on Cygwin with NWFS
530 and NcFsd file systems. This did not affect Unix/Linux-based kernels.
531 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0, when rm began using fts]
533 split -n 1/2 FILE no longer fails when operating on a growing file, or
534 (on some systems) when operating on a non-regular file like /dev/zero.
535 It would report "/dev/zero: No such file or directory" even though
536 the file obviously exists. Same for -n l/2.
537 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8, with the addition of the -n option]
539 stat -f now recognizes the FhGFS and PipeFS file system types.
541 tac no longer fails to handle two or more non-seekable inputs
542 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
544 tail -f no longer tries to use inotify on GPFS or FhGFS file systems
545 [you might say this was introduced in coreutils-7.5, along with inotify
546 support, but the new magic numbers weren't in the usual places then.]
548 ** Changes in behavior
550 df avoids long UUID-including file system names in the default listing.
551 With recent enough kernel/tools, these long names would be used, pushing
552 second and subsequent columns far to the right. Now, when a long name
553 refers to a symlink, and no file systems are specified, df prints the
554 usually-short referent instead.
556 tail -f now uses polling (not inotify) when any of its file arguments
557 resides on a file system of unknown type. In addition, for each such
558 argument, tail -f prints a warning with the FS type magic number and a
559 request to report it to the bug-reporting address.
562 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.14 (2011-10-12) [stable]
566 ls --dereference no longer outputs erroneous "argetm" strings for
567 dangling symlinks when an 'ln=target' entry is in $LS_COLORS.
568 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
570 ls -lL symlink once again properly prints "+" when the referent has an ACL.
571 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.13]
573 sort -g no longer infloops for certain inputs containing NaNs
574 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
578 md5sum --check now supports the -r format from the corresponding BSD tool.
579 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
581 pwd now works also on systems without openat. On such systems, pwd
582 would fail when run from a directory whose absolute name contained
583 more than PATH_MAX / 3 components. The df, stat and readlink programs
584 are also affected due to their use of the canonicalize_* functions.
586 ** Changes in behavior
588 timeout now only processes the first signal received from the set
589 it is handling (SIGTERM, SIGINT, ...). This is to support systems that
590 implicitly create threads for some timer functions (like GNU/kFreeBSD).
594 "make dist" no longer builds .tar.gz files.
595 xz is portable enough and in wide-enough use that distributing
596 only .tar.xz files is enough.
599 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.13 (2011-09-08) [stable]
603 chown and chgrp with the -v --from= options, now output the correct owner.
604 I.E. for skipped files, the original ownership is output, not the new one.
605 [bug introduced in sh-utils-2.0g]
607 cp -r could mistakenly change the permissions of an existing destination
608 directory. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.8]
610 cp -u -p would fail to preserve one hard link for each up-to-date copy
611 of a src-hard-linked name in the destination tree. I.e., if s/a and s/b
612 are hard-linked and dst/s/a is up to date, "cp -up s dst" would copy s/b
613 to dst/s/b rather than simply linking dst/s/b to dst/s/a.
614 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
616 fts-using tools (rm, du, chmod, chgrp, chown, chcon) no longer use memory
617 proportional to the number of entries in each directory they process.
618 Before, rm -rf 4-million-entry-directory would consume about 1GiB of memory.
619 Now, it uses less than 30MB, no matter how many entries there are.
620 [this bug was inherent in the use of fts: thus, for rm the bug was
621 introduced in coreutils-8.0. The prior implementation of rm did not use
622 as much memory. du, chmod, chgrp and chown started using fts in 6.0.
623 chcon was added in coreutils-6.9.91 with fts support. ]
625 pr -T no longer ignores a specified LAST_PAGE to stop at.
626 [bug introduced in textutils-1.19q]
628 printf '%d' '"' no longer accesses out-of-bounds memory in the diagnostic.
629 [bug introduced in sh-utils-1.16]
631 split --number l/... no longer creates extraneous files in certain cases.
632 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
634 timeout now sends signals to commands that create their own process group.
635 timeout is no longer confused when starting off with a child process.
636 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.0]
638 unexpand -a now aligns correctly when there are spaces spanning a tabstop,
639 followed by a tab. In that case a space was dropped, causing misalignment.
640 We also now ensure that a space never precedes a tab.
641 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
643 ** Changes in behavior
645 chmod, chown and chgrp now output the original attributes in messages,
646 when -v or -c specified.
648 cp -au (where --preserve=links is implicit) may now replace newer
649 files in the destination, to mirror hard links from the source.
653 date now accepts ISO 8601 date-time strings with "T" as the
654 separator. It has long parsed dates like "2004-02-29 16:21:42"
655 with a space between the date and time strings. Now it also parses
656 "2004-02-29T16:21:42" and fractional-second and time-zone-annotated
657 variants like "2004-02-29T16:21:42.333-07:00"
659 md5sum accepts the new --strict option. With --check, it makes the
660 tool exit non-zero for any invalid input line, rather than just warning.
661 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
663 split accepts a new --filter=CMD option. With it, split filters output
664 through CMD. CMD may use the $FILE environment variable, which is set to
665 the nominal output file name for each invocation of CMD. For example, to
666 split a file into 3 approximately equal parts, which are then compressed:
667 split -n3 --filter='xz > $FILE.xz' big
668 Note the use of single quotes, not double quotes.
669 That creates files named xaa.xz, xab.xz and xac.xz.
671 timeout accepts a new --foreground option, to support commands not started
672 directly from a shell prompt, where the command is interactive or needs to
673 receive signals initiated from the terminal.
677 cp -p now copies trivial NSFv4 ACLs on Solaris 10. Before, it would
678 mistakenly apply a non-trivial ACL to the destination file.
680 cp and ls now support HP-UX 11.11's ACLs, thanks to improved support
683 df now supports disk partitions larger than 4 TiB on MacOS X 10.5
684 or newer and on AIX 5.2 or newer.
686 join --check-order now prints "join: FILE:LINE_NUMBER: bad_line" for an
687 unsorted input, rather than e.g., "join: file 1 is not in sorted order".
689 shuf outputs small subsets of large permutations much more efficiently.
690 For example 'shuf -i1-$((2**32-1)) -n2' no longer exhausts memory.
692 stat -f now recognizes the GPFS, MQUEUE and PSTOREFS file system types.
694 timeout now supports sub-second timeouts.
698 Changes inherited from gnulib address a build failure on HP-UX 11.11
699 when using /opt/ansic/bin/cc.
701 Numerous portability and build improvements inherited via gnulib.
704 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.12 (2011-04-26) [stable]
708 tail's --follow=name option no longer implies --retry on systems
709 with inotify support. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
711 ** Changes in behavior
713 cp's extent-based (FIEMAP) copying code is more reliable in the face
714 of varying and undocumented file system semantics:
715 - it no longer treats unwritten extents specially
716 - a FIEMAP-based extent copy always uses the FIEMAP_FLAG_SYNC flag.
717 Before, it would incur the performance penalty of that sync only
718 for 2.6.38 and older kernels. We thought all problems would be
720 - it now attempts a FIEMAP copy only on a file that appears sparse.
721 Sparse files are relatively unusual, and the copying code incurs
722 the performance penalty of the now-mandatory sync only for them.
726 dd once again compiles on AIX 5.1 and 5.2
729 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.11 (2011-04-13) [stable]
733 cp -a --link would not create a hardlink to a symlink, instead
734 copying the symlink and then not preserving its timestamp.
735 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
737 cp now avoids FIEMAP issues with BTRFS before Linux 2.6.38,
738 which could result in corrupt copies of sparse files.
739 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
741 cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
742 delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
743 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
745 du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR
746 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
748 sort no longer spawns 7 worker threads to sort 16 lines
749 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
751 touch built on Solaris 9 would segfault when run on Solaris 10
752 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
754 wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
755 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
759 dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options,
760 which will discard any cache associated with the files, or
761 processed portion thereof.
763 dd now warns that 'iflag=fullblock' should be used,
764 in various cases where partial reads can cause issues.
766 ** Changes in behavior
768 cp now avoids syncing files when possible, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
769 The sync is only needed on Linux kernels before 2.6.39.
770 [The sync was introduced in coreutils-8.10]
772 cp now copies empty extents efficiently, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
773 It no longer reads the zero bytes from the input, and also can efficiently
774 create a hole in the output file when --sparse=always is specified.
776 df now aligns columns consistently, and no longer wraps entries
777 with longer device identifiers, over two lines.
779 install now rejects its long-deprecated --preserve_context option.
780 Use --preserve-context instead.
782 test now accepts "==" as a synonym for "="
785 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
789 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
790 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
791 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
792 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
793 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
795 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
796 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
798 join -v2 now ensures the default output format prints the match field
799 at the start of the line when it is different to the match field for
800 the first file. [bug present in "the beginning".]
802 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
803 reject file names invalid for that file system.
805 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
806 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
810 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
811 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
812 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
813 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
814 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
815 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
816 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
817 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
819 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
820 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
821 the same number of fields are output for each line.
823 ** Changes in behavior
825 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
826 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
827 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
830 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
834 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
835 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
836 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
839 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
843 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
844 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
846 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
847 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
849 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
850 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
852 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
853 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
854 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
855 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
857 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
858 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
860 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
861 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
862 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
864 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
866 ** Changes in behavior
868 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
869 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
870 to the number of available processors.
874 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
877 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
881 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
882 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
883 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
884 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
886 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
887 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
888 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
890 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
891 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
893 ** Changes in behavior
895 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
896 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
898 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
899 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
900 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
901 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
902 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
903 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
905 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
906 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
907 the same way as the others.
909 stat gained support for several printf-style flags, such as %'s for
910 listing sizes with the current locale's thousands separator.
913 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
917 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
918 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
919 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
921 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
922 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
924 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
925 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
926 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
928 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
929 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
931 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
932 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
934 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
935 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
936 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
938 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
939 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
940 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
941 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
945 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
946 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
948 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
951 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
952 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
954 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
956 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
957 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
958 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
960 ** Changes in behavior
962 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
963 rather than its aliased target.
965 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
966 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
967 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
969 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
970 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
971 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
972 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
973 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
974 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
975 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
976 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
978 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
980 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
982 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
983 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
986 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
987 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
988 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
989 control like taskset for example.
991 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
993 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
994 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
995 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
996 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
997 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
998 includes %C when context information is available.
1000 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
1001 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
1002 rather than a file system attribute.
1004 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
1005 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
1006 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
1007 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
1009 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
1010 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
1011 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
1013 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
1014 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
1015 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
1018 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
1022 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
1023 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
1025 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
1027 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
1028 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1030 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
1031 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
1032 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
1033 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
1035 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
1036 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
1037 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
1041 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
1042 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
1044 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
1045 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
1046 duration after the initial signal was sent.
1048 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
1049 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
1050 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
1051 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
1052 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
1053 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
1054 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
1055 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
1056 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
1058 ** Changes in behavior
1060 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
1061 sequence when it would be a no-op.
1063 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
1064 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
1067 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
1071 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
1072 of available processors, which may not have been the case
1073 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
1074 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
1078 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
1079 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
1081 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
1082 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
1083 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
1084 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
1086 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
1087 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
1088 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
1091 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
1095 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
1096 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
1097 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
1099 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
1100 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
1101 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
1103 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
1104 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
1106 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
1107 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
1108 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
1109 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
1111 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
1112 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
1113 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
1115 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
1116 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
1117 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
1118 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1120 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
1121 renamed-aside and then recreated.
1122 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1124 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
1125 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
1126 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
1127 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1129 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
1130 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
1131 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
1133 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
1134 processes will not intersperse their output.
1135 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
1138 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
1142 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
1143 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
1145 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
1146 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
1148 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
1149 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
1150 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
1151 the presence of the empty string argument.
1152 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
1154 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
1155 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
1156 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
1157 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1159 tail without -f no longer accesses uninitialized memory
1160 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
1162 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
1163 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
1164 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
1166 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
1167 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
1168 and with a malicious user on the same system
1169 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
1170 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
1173 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
1177 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
1178 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
1179 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
1181 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
1182 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
1183 offending directory and all "contents."
1185 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
1186 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
1187 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
1189 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
1190 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
1191 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1193 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
1194 processes will not intersperse their output.
1195 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
1196 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
1198 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
1199 output the name of the file to stdout.
1200 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
1202 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
1203 call fails with errno == EACCES.
1204 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
1206 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
1207 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
1210 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
1211 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
1212 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
1214 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
1215 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
1216 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
1217 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
1218 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
1219 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1221 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
1222 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
1223 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
1224 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
1226 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
1227 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
1229 ** Changes in behavior
1231 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
1232 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
1233 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
1234 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
1235 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
1237 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
1238 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
1239 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
1240 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
1242 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
1244 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
1245 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
1246 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
1247 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
1248 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
1252 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
1256 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
1257 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
1259 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
1260 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
1262 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
1263 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
1264 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
1266 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
1267 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
1270 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
1274 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
1275 when the source file doesn't have write access.
1276 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1278 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
1279 to accommodate leap seconds.
1280 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
1282 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
1283 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
1284 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1286 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
1288 "ls -is" is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
1289 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
1290 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
1292 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
1293 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
1294 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
1295 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
1296 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
1300 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
1301 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
1302 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceding name is a
1303 directory or a symlink to a directory.
1305 ** Changes in behavior
1307 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
1308 environment variable is set.
1310 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
1311 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
1312 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
1316 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
1317 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
1318 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
1319 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
1321 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
1322 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
1323 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
1324 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
1328 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
1329 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
1330 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
1332 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
1333 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
1334 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
1335 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
1336 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
1337 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
1338 another improvement:
1340 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
1341 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
1344 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
1348 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
1349 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
1350 and libraries tested at configure time.
1351 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1353 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
1354 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1356 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
1357 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1359 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
1360 printing a summary to stderr.
1361 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1363 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
1364 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
1365 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
1367 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
1368 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
1370 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
1371 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
1372 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
1373 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1375 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
1376 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
1377 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
1378 which is relatively unusual.
1379 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1381 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
1382 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
1383 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
1384 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
1385 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
1386 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
1387 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
1391 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
1392 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
1393 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
1394 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
1395 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
1399 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
1400 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
1402 ** Changes in behavior
1404 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
1405 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
1406 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
1407 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
1408 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
1411 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
1415 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
1416 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
1418 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
1419 before data copying has started.
1421 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
1422 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1424 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
1425 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
1426 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
1427 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1429 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
1430 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
1431 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
1432 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
1434 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
1439 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
1440 for its standard streams.
1442 ** Changes in behavior
1444 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
1445 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
1446 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
1447 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
1448 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
1449 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
1451 ** Deprecated options
1453 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
1454 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
1458 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
1460 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
1461 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
1462 a btrfs file system.
1464 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
1466 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
1467 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
1469 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
1470 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
1473 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
1477 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
1478 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
1479 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
1480 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
1482 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
1483 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
1484 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
1485 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
1486 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
1491 make check: two tests have been corrected
1495 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
1496 inherited from gnulib.
1499 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
1503 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
1504 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
1505 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
1506 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
1508 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
1509 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
1511 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
1513 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
1514 systems without xattr support.
1516 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
1517 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
1518 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
1520 ** Changes in behavior
1522 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
1523 This is mainly noticeable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
1524 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
1525 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
1527 ** Improved robustness
1529 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
1530 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
1531 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
1532 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
1533 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
1534 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
1535 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
1536 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
1537 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1541 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
1542 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
1544 'id -G $USER' now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
1545 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
1546 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
1547 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1548 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1551 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
1555 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
1556 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
1557 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
1561 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
1562 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
1563 data was read, or on process exit.
1564 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1566 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
1567 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
1568 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
1569 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1571 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
1572 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
1573 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
1574 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1576 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
1577 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
1579 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
1580 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1582 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
1583 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
1584 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
1586 ** Changes in behavior
1588 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
1589 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
1590 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
1592 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
1593 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
1595 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
1596 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
1597 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
1600 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
1604 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
1606 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
1607 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
1608 install: Never copies xattrs
1610 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
1611 from overwriting any existing destination file
1613 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
1614 mode where this feature is available.
1616 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
1617 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
1618 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
1619 do not modify the destination at all.
1621 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
1623 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
1627 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
1628 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
1630 cp uses much less memory in some situations
1632 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
1633 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
1635 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
1636 processing the first file name
1638 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
1639 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
1640 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
1641 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1643 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
1644 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
1646 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
1647 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
1650 ** Changes in behavior
1652 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
1653 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
1655 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
1656 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
1657 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
1659 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
1660 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
1662 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
1664 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
1665 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
1666 is still marked with a '+'.
1669 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
1673 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
1674 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
1678 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
1679 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
1680 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
1681 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
1682 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
1683 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
1685 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1686 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1688 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
1689 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
1691 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
1693 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
1694 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
1695 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
1697 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
1698 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
1700 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
1701 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
1702 used to factor large numbers.
1704 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
1707 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
1709 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
1711 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
1712 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
1714 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
1715 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
1716 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
1717 maximum command-line (argv) length.
1719 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
1720 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
1721 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
1723 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
1724 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
1728 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
1730 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
1731 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
1733 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
1734 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
1736 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
1738 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
1739 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
1743 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
1744 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
1745 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
1747 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
1749 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
1750 no matter how many files are in a given directory. I.e., to list a directory
1751 with very many files, ls -1U is much more efficient.
1753 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
1754 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
1755 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
1757 ** Changes in behavior
1759 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
1760 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
1763 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
1767 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve nanosecond resolution on
1768 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimensat' and
1769 'futimens' system calls.
1773 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
1775 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
1776 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
1777 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
1779 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
1780 with no USERNAME argument.
1782 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
1783 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
1784 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
1786 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
1787 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
1788 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
1789 number of fields for some inputs.
1791 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
1792 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1794 ** Changes in behavior
1796 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1797 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1800 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1804 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1806 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1807 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1808 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1809 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1811 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1812 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1814 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1815 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1817 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1818 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1820 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1821 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1822 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1823 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1825 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1826 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1827 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1828 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1829 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1830 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1832 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1833 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1835 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1836 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1837 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1839 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1840 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1842 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1843 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1845 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1846 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1847 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1848 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1850 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1851 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1853 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1854 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1856 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1857 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1858 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1862 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1863 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1865 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1866 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1867 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1868 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1872 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1873 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1875 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1877 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1881 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1882 which have negative errno values.
1886 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1890 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1894 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1895 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1898 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1902 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1903 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1904 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1906 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1907 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1908 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1909 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1913 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1914 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1915 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1916 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1919 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1923 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1925 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1926 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1927 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1930 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1934 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1935 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1937 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1939 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1941 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1943 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1947 ** Changes in behavior
1949 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1950 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1952 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1953 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1955 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1956 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1957 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1961 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1962 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1963 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1964 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1965 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1966 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1967 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1968 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1969 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1970 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1971 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1973 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1974 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1975 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1978 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1981 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1982 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1983 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1985 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1986 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1987 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1990 ** New build options
1992 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1993 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1994 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1995 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1997 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1998 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1999 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
2000 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
2001 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
2002 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
2003 of "make check" fail.
2005 ** Remove deprecated options
2007 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
2008 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
2009 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
2010 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
2011 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
2013 ** Improved robustness
2015 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
2016 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
2017 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
2018 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
2019 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
2020 loss of the contents of a/f.
2022 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
2023 in its 35-colon command-line argument
2027 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
2028 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
2029 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
2031 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
2032 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
2033 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
2034 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
2036 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
2037 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
2038 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
2039 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
2040 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
2041 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
2042 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
2043 destination is a symlink.
2045 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
2047 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
2048 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
2050 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
2051 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
2053 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
2055 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
2056 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
2058 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
2059 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
2061 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
2064 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
2065 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
2067 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
2068 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
2070 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
2071 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
2072 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
2073 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
2075 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
2076 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
2077 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
2079 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
2080 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
2081 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
2083 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
2084 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
2085 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
2086 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
2088 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
2089 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
2090 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
2092 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
2093 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
2095 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
2096 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
2098 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
2100 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
2101 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
2102 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
2104 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
2105 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
2107 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
2108 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
2110 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
2111 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
2113 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
2114 [present in the original version]
2117 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
2121 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
2123 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
2124 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
2125 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
2127 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
2128 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
2130 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
2134 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
2135 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
2137 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
2138 support but with insufficient /proc support.
2140 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
2141 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
2143 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
2144 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
2145 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
2146 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
2147 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
2148 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
2150 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
2151 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
2154 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
2155 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
2157 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
2160 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
2161 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
2162 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
2164 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
2165 directory is unreadable.
2167 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
2168 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
2169 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
2171 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
2172 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
2173 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
2174 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
2175 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
2178 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
2179 Before it would print nothing.
2181 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
2183 "rm -rf D" would emit a misleading diagnostic when failing to
2184 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
2185 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
2186 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
2187 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
2188 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
2189 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
2190 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
2192 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
2196 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
2197 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
2198 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
2200 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
2201 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
2202 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
2203 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
2206 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
2210 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
2211 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
2212 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
2213 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
2214 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
2215 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
2216 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
2218 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
2219 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
2220 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
2221 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
2222 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
2223 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
2224 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
2225 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
2227 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
2228 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
2229 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
2232 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
2236 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
2237 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
2239 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
2240 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
2241 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
2243 ** Improved robustness
2245 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
2246 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
2247 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
2250 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
2254 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
2255 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
2256 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
2257 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
2258 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
2260 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
2264 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
2267 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
2271 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
2272 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
2273 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
2274 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
2276 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
2277 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
2279 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
2280 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
2281 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
2284 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
2286 ** Improved robustness
2288 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
2289 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
2291 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
2292 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
2293 or NFS-mounted partition.
2295 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
2296 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
2300 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
2301 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
2302 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
2303 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
2304 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
2305 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
2307 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
2308 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
2310 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
2311 or neglect to report file removal.
2313 For the "groups" command:
2315 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
2316 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
2318 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
2320 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
2322 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
2326 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
2327 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
2330 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
2332 ** Changes in behavior
2334 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
2335 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
2336 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
2337 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
2339 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., 'rm -fr /'
2340 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
2341 a final './' or '../' component.
2343 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
2344 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
2345 this only for pipes.
2347 ** Infrastructure changes
2349 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
2350 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
2351 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
2352 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
2356 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
2357 name is "." or "..".
2359 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
2360 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
2361 dirent.d_type support.
2363 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
2364 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
2366 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
2367 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
2368 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
2369 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
2372 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
2374 ** Changes in behavior
2376 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
2380 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
2381 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
2385 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
2386 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
2387 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
2389 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
2390 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
2392 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
2393 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
2395 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
2397 ** Improved robustness
2399 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
2400 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
2401 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
2403 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
2404 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
2407 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
2408 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
2410 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
2411 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
2413 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
2414 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
2416 ** Changes in behavior
2418 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
2419 where the two are distinct.
2421 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
2422 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
2423 'chmod 755 DIR' and 'chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
2424 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
2425 similarly for 'mkdir -m 755 DIR' and 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
2426 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
2427 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
2428 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., 'mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
2429 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
2430 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
2431 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
2432 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
2433 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 'mkdir -m
2434 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but 'chmod 777 D' clears it.
2435 Conversely, Solaris 10 'mkdir -m 777 D', 'mkdir -m g-s D', and
2436 'chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
2437 something like 'chmod g-s D' to clear it.
2439 'cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
2440 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
2441 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
2443 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
2444 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
2445 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
2446 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
2449 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
2450 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
2454 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
2455 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
2456 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
2457 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
2459 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
2460 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
2461 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
2463 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
2464 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
2465 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
2466 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
2467 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
2470 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
2471 e.g., 'mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
2473 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
2474 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
2475 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
2476 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
2478 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
2479 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
2480 successful and the output is easier to parse.
2482 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
2483 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
2484 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
2485 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
2487 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
2488 and sticky) with the -m option.
2490 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
2491 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
2492 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
2493 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
2494 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
2496 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
2497 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
2499 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
2503 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
2504 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
2505 You no longer need the '-f%.f' in 'seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
2506 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
2508 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
2510 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
2512 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
2513 silently ignoring one of them.
2515 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
2516 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
2517 containing this change was 5.92.
2519 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
2520 automatically newline terminated.
2522 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
2523 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
2524 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
2525 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
2528 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
2529 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2530 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
2533 ** Scheduled for removal
2535 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
2536 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
2538 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
2539 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
2540 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
2541 command to unlink a directory.
2543 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
2544 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
2545 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
2546 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
2550 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
2551 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
2552 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
2553 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
2554 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
2555 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
2559 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
2560 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
2562 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
2564 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
2565 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
2566 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
2568 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
2569 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
2572 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
2573 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
2575 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
2576 list directories before files.
2578 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
2579 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
2580 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
2581 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
2584 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
2586 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and 'R' ordering option.
2588 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
2589 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
2590 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
2592 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2593 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2597 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
2598 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
2599 usually printing nothing.
2601 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
2603 When 'cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
2604 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
2605 them with hard-linked directories.
2607 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
2608 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
2609 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
2611 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
2612 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
2613 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
2615 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
2618 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
2619 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
2621 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
2622 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
2624 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
2625 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
2627 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
2628 all command-line arguments.
2630 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
2632 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
2634 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
2635 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
2637 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
2639 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
2640 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
2641 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
2642 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
2643 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
2645 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
2646 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
2648 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
2649 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
2650 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
2651 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
2653 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
2655 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
2659 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
2660 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
2662 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
2663 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
2665 md5sum once again defaults to using the ' ' non-binary marker
2666 (rather than the '*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
2668 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
2669 a directory like 'nonexistent/.'
2671 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
2672 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
2674 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
2676 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
2677 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
2678 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
2681 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
2683 ** Build-related bug fixes
2685 installing .mo files would fail
2688 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
2692 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
2694 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
2697 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
2701 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
2702 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
2706 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
2708 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
2709 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
2711 ** Deprecated options
2713 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
2714 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use '-k' instead.
2716 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
2720 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
2722 ** Bring back support for 'head -NUM', 'tail -NUM', etc. even when
2723 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
2724 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
2725 conforming to older POSIX versions.
2727 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
2730 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
2736 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
2741 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
2743 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
2745 date -I TIMESPEC (use 'date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
2746 od -w WIDTH (use 'od -wWIDTH' instead)
2747 pr -S STRING (use 'pr -SSTRING' instead)
2749 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
2750 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
2751 problematic usages. These include:
2753 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
2754 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
2755 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
2756 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
2757 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
2758 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
2759 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
2760 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
2761 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
2763 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
2764 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
2766 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
2767 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
2768 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
2769 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
2771 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
2772 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
2773 between binary and text files.
2775 The following programs now always use text input/output:
2779 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
2783 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
2784 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
2786 head tac tail tee tr
2787 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
2789 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
2790 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
2792 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2793 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2794 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2796 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2798 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2800 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2801 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2802 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2806 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2808 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2809 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2811 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2812 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2813 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2817 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2818 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2822 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2823 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2824 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2828 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2829 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2833 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2835 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2837 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2841 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2842 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2843 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2845 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2846 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2847 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2848 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2849 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2851 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2855 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2856 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2857 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2859 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2861 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2862 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2863 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2864 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2866 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2868 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2869 rather than silently wrapping around.
2871 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2872 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2874 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2875 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2877 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the '.'-relative
2878 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2879 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2880 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2882 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2884 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2886 ** Improved robustness
2888 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2889 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2890 no matter how large the result.
2892 ** Improved portability
2894 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2895 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2897 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2899 'rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2900 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2901 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2903 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2904 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2908 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2909 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2911 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2913 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2914 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2915 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2916 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2918 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2919 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2921 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2922 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2923 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2925 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2927 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2928 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2930 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2931 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2933 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2935 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2936 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2938 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2939 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2941 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2942 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2943 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2945 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2947 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2949 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2953 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2955 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2956 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2957 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2959 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2960 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2962 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2963 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2964 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2966 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2967 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2969 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2970 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2971 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2972 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2974 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2975 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2977 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2978 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2979 the file system does not support it.
2981 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2983 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2984 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2986 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2988 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2989 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2991 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2992 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2993 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2994 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2996 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2997 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
3000 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
3001 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
3002 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
3003 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
3005 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
3006 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
3007 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
3008 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
3010 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
3011 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
3013 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
3015 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
3016 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
3017 reporting incorrect results.
3021 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
3022 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
3024 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
3027 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
3029 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
3030 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
3032 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
3033 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
3035 'pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to 'pr -N' when also using
3038 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
3039 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
3040 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
3041 the file name does not look like a page range.
3043 printf has several changes:
3045 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
3046 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
3048 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
3049 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
3050 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
3052 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
3053 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
3056 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
3057 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
3059 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
3060 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
3062 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
3064 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
3065 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
3067 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
3069 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
3071 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
3072 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
3073 when first encountering the directory.
3077 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
3078 output; POSIX requires this.
3080 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
3081 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
3083 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
3085 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
3086 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
3088 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
3089 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
3091 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
3092 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
3093 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
3094 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
3095 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
3096 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
3097 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
3099 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
3100 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
3101 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
3103 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
3104 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
3106 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
3108 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
3110 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
3111 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
3112 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
3113 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
3115 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
3119 For efficiency, 'sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
3120 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
3121 some relatively-contrived examples like 'cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
3122 are no longer safe, as 'sort' might start writing F before 'cat' is
3123 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless '-m' is used.
3125 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
3126 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
3127 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
3129 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
3130 is longer than PATH_MAX.
3132 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
3133 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
3135 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
3136 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
3137 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
3138 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
3139 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
3141 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
3142 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
3144 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
3145 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
3147 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
3149 nocreat do not create the output file
3150 excl fail if the output file already exists
3151 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
3152 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
3154 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
3156 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
3157 direct use direct I/O for data
3158 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
3159 sync likewise, but also for metadata
3160 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
3161 nofollow do not follow symlinks
3162 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
3164 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
3166 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
3167 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append '\n' to the format
3170 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
3171 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
3172 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
3173 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
3174 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
3175 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
3177 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
3178 list of NUL-terminated file names.
3180 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
3183 Dates like 'January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
3185 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
3187 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
3188 prefixed by '@'. For example, '@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
3190 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
3191 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
3192 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
3194 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
3195 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
3196 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
3198 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
3200 'date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
3201 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
3203 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
3204 for compatibility with bash.
3206 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
3208 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
3209 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
3210 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
3211 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
3213 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
3214 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
3216 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
3217 ls supports TABSIZE.
3218 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
3219 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
3220 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
3222 The usual '--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
3225 'od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
3227 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
3228 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
3229 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
3230 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
3231 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
3232 an offset, not as a file name.
3234 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
3235 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
3237 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
3238 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
3240 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
3241 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
3243 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
3244 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
3245 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
3247 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
3248 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
3250 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
3251 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
3255 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
3257 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
3259 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
3263 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
3264 or more arguments between partitions.
3266 'cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
3267 holes in the destination.
3269 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
3270 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
3271 this change, if you ran 'ssh localhost', then 'nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
3272 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
3273 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
3274 terminates immediately.
3276 'expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
3278 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
3280 The '|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
3281 arguments are null or zero. E.g., 'expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
3282 not the empty string.
3284 The '|' and '&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
3285 'expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
3289 'chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
3290 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
3291 containing '.' that happens to equal 'user.group'.
3294 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
3301 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
3305 'cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
3306 declare stat and lstat as 'static inline' functions.
3308 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
3309 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
3311 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
3312 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
3313 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
3316 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
3320 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
3321 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
3323 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
3324 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
3326 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
3327 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
3328 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
3330 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
3332 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
3335 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
3337 ** Configuration option
3339 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
3340 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
3344 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
3345 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
3349 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
3350 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
3351 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
3354 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
3355 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
3356 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
3357 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
3358 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
3359 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
3360 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3363 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
3367 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
3368 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
3369 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
3371 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
3372 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
3374 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
3376 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
3377 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
3378 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
3379 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
3381 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
3383 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
3384 not just the ones that reference directories
3386 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
3387 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
3389 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
3390 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
3391 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
3393 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
3394 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
3395 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
3396 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
3397 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
3398 ragged when a datum was too wide.
3400 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
3405 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
3406 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
3408 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
3410 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
3412 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
3414 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
3415 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
3417 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
3418 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
3420 dd 'unblock' and 'sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
3422 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
3426 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
3428 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
3430 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
3431 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
3432 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
3433 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
3434 resolution is the best we can do right now.
3436 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
3437 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
3439 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
3440 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
3442 'sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
3443 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
3445 who -l now means 'who --login', not 'who --lookup', per POSIX.
3446 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
3447 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
3451 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via 'mv B b' when 'B' is
3452 the same directory entry as 'b' no longer destroys the directory entry
3453 referenced by both 'b' and 'B'. Note that this would happen only on
3454 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
3455 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
3456 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
3457 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
3458 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
3459 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
3460 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
3461 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
3462 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
3463 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
3464 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
3466 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in '%'
3468 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
3469 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
3471 'split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
3473 'df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
3475 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
3476 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
3478 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
3480 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
3481 without a trailing newline.
3483 'tail -n0 -f FILE' and 'tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
3484 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
3486 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
3489 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
3493 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
3495 'test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
3497 'test -t', 'test --help', and 'test --version' now silently exit
3498 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
3499 'test -t 1'. To get help and version info for 'test', use
3500 '[ --help' and '[ --version'.
3502 'test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
3504 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
3505 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
3506 be printed without leading spaces.
3508 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
3509 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
3514 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
3515 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
3516 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
3518 '[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
3520 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
3521 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
3523 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
3524 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
3526 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
3527 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
3529 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
3531 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
3533 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
3535 'sort --version' and 'sort --help' fail, as they should
3536 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
3538 'su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
3540 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
3542 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
3543 byte offsets are specified.
3546 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
3549 - new program: '[' (much like 'test')
3552 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
3553 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
3554 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
3555 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
3556 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
3557 - chown: '.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
3558 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
3559 on such a system, then it still accepts '.', by default. If chown
3560 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
3561 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
3562 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
3563 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
3564 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
3565 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
3566 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
3567 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
3568 directory where M has write access.
3569 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
3570 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
3571 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
3574 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
3575 - 'du /' once again prints the '/' on the last line
3576 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
3577 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
3578 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
3579 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted 'file truncated' warning.
3580 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
3581 - df and 'readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
3582 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
3583 - 'env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
3584 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
3585 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
3586 - mv now removes 'a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
3587 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
3588 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
3589 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
3590 - date's '-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
3591 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
3592 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like '-72x'
3593 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
3594 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
3595 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
3596 appeared one additional time.
3598 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
3599 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
3600 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
3601 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
3604 - 'kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than '?') on systems
3605 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
3606 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
3607 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
3608 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
3609 Before 'rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
3610 if there were more than 338.
3612 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
3613 - false --help now exits nonzero
3616 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
3617 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
3618 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
3619 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
3622 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
3623 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of '0'
3624 * seq now accepts " " and "'" as valid format flag characters
3625 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
3626 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
3629 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
3630 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
3631 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
3632 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to "infinite" recursion
3633 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
3634 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
3635 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3638 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
3639 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
3640 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
3641 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
3642 * 'df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
3643 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
3645 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3646 under certain unusual conditions
3647 * mv and 'cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
3648 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
3651 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3652 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
3653 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
3654 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
3655 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
3656 * df now always displays under 'Filesystem', the device file name
3657 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
3658 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
3659 'df /dev/hda' would list '/dev/hda' as the 'Filesystem', rather than say
3660 /dev/hda3 (the device on which '/' is mounted), as it does now.
3661 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
3662 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
3663 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
3664 'test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
3665 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
3666 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
3669 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
3670 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
3673 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
3674 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
3675 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
3676 involving hard-linked directories
3677 * 'who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
3678 * df now displays a mount point (usually '/') for non-mounted
3679 character-special and block files
3682 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
3683 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
3684 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
3685 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
3686 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
3687 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
3688 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
3689 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
3690 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
3692 * ls dangling-symlink now prints 'dangling-symlink'.
3693 Before, it would fail with 'no such file or directory'.
3694 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
3695 attributes of 'symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
3696 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
3697 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
3698 specified on the command line.
3699 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
3700 Before, 'shred --zero file' would produce 'shred: missing file argument',
3701 and worse, 'shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
3702 the first file untouched.
3703 * readlink: new program
3704 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
3705 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
3706 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
3707 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
3708 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
3709 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
3712 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
3713 * 'ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
3714 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
3715 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
3716 * 'du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
3717 * 'du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
3718 * In the unlikely event that running 'du /' resulted in 'stat ("/", ...)'
3719 failing, du would give a diagnostic about '' (empty string) rather than '/'.
3720 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
3721 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
3722 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
3723 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
3725 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
3726 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
3727 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
3729 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
3730 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
3731 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
3732 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
3733 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
3734 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
3735 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
3736 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this 'yes|nl -s%n'
3739 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
3740 * 'ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
3743 * 'rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
3744 * 'tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
3745 * 'mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
3746 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
3747 * printf now honors the '--' command line delimiter
3748 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
3749 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
3752 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
3753 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
3755 ========================================================================
3756 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
3757 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3760 * 'rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
3762 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3763 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
3764 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
3765 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
3766 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
3767 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
3768 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
3769 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 through 4.1.9.
3770 * 'rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
3771 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
3772 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
3773 The old options will continue to work for a while.
3775 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
3776 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
3777 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
3778 * 'touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
3780 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
3783 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
3785 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
3786 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
3787 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
3788 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
3789 * The obsolete usage 'touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
3790 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
3791 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3794 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3795 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3796 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3797 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3798 A missing 'B' (e.g. '1M') has the same meaning as before.
3799 A trailing 'B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3800 The nonstandard 'D' suffix (e.g. '1MD') is now obsolescent.
3801 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3802 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3803 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3804 * You can omit an integer '1' before a block size suffix,
3805 e.g. 'df -BG' is equivalent to 'df -B 1G' and to 'df --block-size=1G'.
3806 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3807 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3808 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3809 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3811 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3812 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3814 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3815 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3816 * dd once again uses 'lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3817 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3818 resort to emulating 'skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3819 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3821 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3822 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3823 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3824 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3825 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3826 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., 'chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3827 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3829 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3830 the source files in the following example:
3831 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3832 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3833 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3834 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3835 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3836 links between source files with --preserve=links
3837 * cp accepts new options:
3838 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3839 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3840 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3841 to '--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3842 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3843 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3844 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3845 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off '-i'.
3846 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3848 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3849 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3850 * mv: fix the bug whereby 'mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3851 even though it's older than dest.
3852 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3853 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3854 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3855 * 'ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3856 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3858 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3859 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3860 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3861 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3862 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3863 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3864 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3866 - The 'full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3867 '2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3868 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3870 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3871 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3872 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3873 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3874 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3875 This is the default.
3877 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3878 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3879 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3880 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3881 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3883 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3886 ========================================================================
3887 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3888 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3891 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3892 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3894 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3895 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3896 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3897 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3898 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3900 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3901 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3902 that specifies a non-directory
3905 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3906 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3907 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3908 the long option '--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3909 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3910 - 'date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use 'date --iso-8601'.
3911 - 'nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use 'nice -n NUM'.
3912 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3913 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3914 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3915 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3916 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3917 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3918 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3919 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3920 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3921 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3922 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3923 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3924 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3925 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3926 This problem arose only with relative date strings like 'last monday'.
3927 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3928 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3930 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3931 * 'date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3932 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3934 * 'date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3936 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3937 'write error' when invoked with the --version option
3939 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3940 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3941 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3942 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the 'C' locale
3943 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3945 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3946 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3947 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3948 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3949 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3951 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3953 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3954 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3955 * still more portability fixes
3956 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3957 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3959 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3961 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3963 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3965 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3966 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3967 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3968 there is any time remaining
3969 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3971 ========================================================================
3972 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3973 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3975 This package began as the union of the following:
3976 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3978 ========================================================================
3980 Copyright (C) 2001-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3982 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3983 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3984 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3985 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3986 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the "GNU Free
3987 Documentation License" file as part of this distribution.