1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
10 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
11 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
12 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
13 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
15 ** Changes in behavior
17 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
18 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
19 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
20 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
21 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
22 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
26 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
28 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
29 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
31 tail uses inotify when possible.
34 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
38 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
39 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
40 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
41 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
43 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
44 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
45 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
46 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
47 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
52 make check: two tests have been corrected
56 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
57 inherited from gnulib.
60 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
64 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
65 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
66 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
67 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
69 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
70 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
72 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
74 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
75 systems without xattr support.
77 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
78 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
79 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
81 ** Changes in behavior
83 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
84 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
85 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
86 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
88 ** Improved robustness
90 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
91 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
92 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
93 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
94 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
95 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
96 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
98 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
102 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
103 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
105 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
106 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
107 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
108 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
109 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
112 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
116 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
117 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
118 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
122 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
123 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
124 data was read, or on process exit.
125 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
127 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
128 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
129 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
130 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
132 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
133 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
134 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
135 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
137 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
138 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
140 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
141 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
143 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
144 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
145 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
147 ** Changes in behavior
149 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
150 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
151 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
153 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
154 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
156 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
157 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
158 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
161 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
165 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
167 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
168 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
169 install: Never copies xattrs
171 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
172 from overwriting any existing destination file
174 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
175 mode where this feature is available.
177 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
178 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
179 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
180 do not modify the destination at all.
182 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
184 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
188 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
189 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
191 cp uses much less memory in some situations
193 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
194 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
196 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
197 processing the first file name
199 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
200 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
201 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
202 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
204 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
205 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
207 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
208 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
211 ** Changes in behavior
213 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
214 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
216 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
217 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
218 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
220 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
221 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
223 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
225 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
226 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
227 is still marked with a '+'.
230 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
234 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
235 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
239 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
240 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
241 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
242 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
243 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
244 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
246 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
247 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
249 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
250 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
252 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
254 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
255 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
256 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
258 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
259 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
261 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
262 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
263 used to factor large numbers.
265 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
268 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
270 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
272 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
273 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
275 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
276 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
277 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
278 maximum command-line (argv) length.
280 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
281 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
282 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
284 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
285 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
289 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
291 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
292 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
294 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
295 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
297 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
299 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
300 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
304 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
305 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
306 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
308 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
310 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
311 no matter how many files are in a given directory
313 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
314 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
315 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
317 ** Changes in behavior
319 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
320 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
323 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
327 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
329 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
330 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
331 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
333 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
334 with no USERNAME argument.
336 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
337 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
338 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
340 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
341 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
342 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
343 number of fields for some inputs.
345 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
346 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
348 ** Changes in behavior
350 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
351 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
354 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
358 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
360 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
361 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
362 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
363 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
365 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
366 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
368 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
369 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
371 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
372 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
374 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
375 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
376 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
377 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
379 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
380 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
381 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
382 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
383 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
384 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
386 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
387 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
389 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
390 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
391 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
393 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
394 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
396 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
397 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
399 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
400 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
401 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
402 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
404 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
405 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
407 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
408 in more cases when a directory is empty.
410 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
411 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
412 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
416 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
417 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
419 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
420 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
421 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
422 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
426 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
427 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
429 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
431 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
435 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
436 which have negative errno values.
440 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
444 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
448 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
449 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
452 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
456 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
457 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
458 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
460 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
461 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
462 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
463 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
467 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
468 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
469 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
470 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
473 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
477 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
479 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
480 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
481 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
484 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
488 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
489 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
491 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
493 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
495 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
497 ** Programs no longer installed by default
501 ** Changes in behavior
503 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
504 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
506 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
507 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
509 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
510 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
511 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
515 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
516 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
517 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
518 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
519 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
520 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
521 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
522 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
523 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
524 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
525 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
527 The following commands and options now support the standard size
528 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
529 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
532 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
535 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
536 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
537 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
539 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
540 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
541 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
546 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
547 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
548 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
549 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
551 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
552 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
553 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
554 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
555 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
556 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
557 of "make check" fail.
559 ** Remove deprecated options
561 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
562 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
563 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
564 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
565 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
567 ** Improved robustness
569 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
570 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
571 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
572 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
573 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
574 loss of the contents of a/f.
576 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
577 in its 35-colon command-line argument
581 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
582 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
583 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
585 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
586 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
587 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
588 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
590 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
591 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
592 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
593 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
594 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
595 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
596 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
597 destination is a symlink.
599 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
601 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
602 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
604 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
605 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
607 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
609 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
610 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
612 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
613 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
615 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
618 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
619 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
621 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
622 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
624 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
625 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
626 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
627 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
629 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
630 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
631 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
633 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
634 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
635 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
637 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
638 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
639 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
640 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
642 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
643 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
644 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
646 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
647 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
649 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
650 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
652 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
654 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
655 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
656 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
658 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
659 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
661 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
662 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
664 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
665 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
667 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
668 [present in the original version]
671 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
675 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
677 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
678 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
679 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
681 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
682 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
684 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
688 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
689 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
691 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
692 support but with insufficient /proc support.
694 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
695 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
697 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
698 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
699 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
700 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
701 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
702 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
704 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
705 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
708 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
709 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
711 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
714 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
715 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
716 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
718 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
719 directory is unreadable.
721 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
722 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
723 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
725 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
726 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
727 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
728 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
729 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
732 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
733 Before it would print nothing.
735 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
737 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
738 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
739 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
740 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
741 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
742 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
743 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
744 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
746 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
750 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
751 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
752 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
754 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
755 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
756 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
757 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
760 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
764 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
765 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
766 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
767 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
768 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
769 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
770 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
772 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
773 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
774 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
775 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
776 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
777 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
778 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
779 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
781 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
782 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
783 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
786 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
790 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
791 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
793 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
794 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
795 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
797 ** Improved robustness
799 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
800 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
801 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
804 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
808 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
809 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
810 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
811 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
812 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
814 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
818 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
821 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
825 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
826 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
827 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
828 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
830 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
831 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
833 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
834 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
835 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
838 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
840 ** Improved robustness
842 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
843 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
845 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
846 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
847 or NFS-mounted partition.
849 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
850 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
854 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
855 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
856 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
857 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
858 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
859 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
861 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
862 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
864 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
865 or neglect to report file removal.
867 For the "groups" command:
869 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
870 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
872 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
874 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
876 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
880 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
881 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
884 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
886 ** Changes in behavior
888 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
889 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
890 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
891 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
893 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
894 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
895 a final `./' or `../' component.
897 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
898 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
901 ** Infrastructure changes
903 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
904 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
905 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
906 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
910 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
913 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
914 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
915 dirent.d_type support.
917 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
918 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
920 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
921 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
922 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
923 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
926 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
928 ** Changes in behavior
930 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
934 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
935 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
939 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
940 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
941 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
943 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
944 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
946 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
947 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
949 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
951 ** Improved robustness
953 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
954 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
955 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
957 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
958 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
961 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
962 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
964 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
965 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
967 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
968 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
970 ** Changes in behavior
972 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
973 where the two are distinct.
975 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
976 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
977 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
978 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
979 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
980 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
981 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
982 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
983 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
984 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
985 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
986 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
987 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
988 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
989 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
990 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
991 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
993 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
994 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
995 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
997 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
998 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
999 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1000 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1003 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1004 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1008 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1009 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1010 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1011 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1013 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1014 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1015 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1017 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1018 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1019 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1020 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1021 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1024 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1025 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1027 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1028 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1029 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1030 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1032 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1033 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1034 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1036 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1037 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1038 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1039 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1041 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1042 and sticky) with the -m option.
1044 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1045 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1046 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1047 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1048 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1050 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1051 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1053 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1057 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1058 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1059 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1060 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1062 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1064 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1066 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1067 silently ignoring one of them.
1069 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1070 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1071 containing this change was 5.92.
1073 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1074 automatically newline terminated.
1076 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1077 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1078 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1079 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1082 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1083 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1084 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1087 ** Scheduled for removal
1089 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1090 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1092 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1093 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1094 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1095 command to unlink a directory.
1097 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1098 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1099 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1100 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1104 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1105 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1106 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1107 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1108 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1109 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1113 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1114 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1116 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1118 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1119 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1120 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1122 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1123 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1126 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1127 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1129 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1130 list directories before files.
1132 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1133 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1134 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1135 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1138 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1140 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1142 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1143 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1144 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1146 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1147 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1151 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1152 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1153 usually printing nothing.
1155 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1157 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1158 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1159 them with hard-linked directories.
1161 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1162 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1163 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1165 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1166 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1167 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1169 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1172 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1173 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1175 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1176 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1178 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1179 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1181 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1182 all command-line arguments.
1184 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1186 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1188 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1189 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1191 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1193 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1194 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1195 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1196 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1197 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1199 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1200 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1202 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1203 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1204 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1205 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1207 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1209 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1213 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1214 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1216 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1217 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1219 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1220 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1222 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1223 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1225 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1226 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1228 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1230 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1231 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1232 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1235 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1237 ** Build-related bug fixes
1239 installing .mo files would fail
1242 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1246 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1248 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1251 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1255 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1256 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1260 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1262 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1263 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1265 ** Deprecated options
1267 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1268 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1270 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1274 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1276 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1277 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1278 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1279 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1281 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1284 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1290 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1295 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1297 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1299 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1300 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1301 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1303 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1304 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1305 problematic usages. These include:
1307 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1308 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1309 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1310 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1311 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1312 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1313 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1314 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1315 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1317 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1318 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1320 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1321 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1322 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1323 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1325 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1326 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1327 between binary and text files.
1329 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1333 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1337 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1338 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1340 head tac tail tee tr
1341 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1343 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1344 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1346 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1347 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1348 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1350 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1352 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1354 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1355 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1356 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1360 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1362 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1363 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1365 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1366 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1367 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1371 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1372 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1376 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1377 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1378 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1382 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1383 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1387 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1389 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1391 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1395 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1396 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1397 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1399 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1400 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1401 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1402 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1403 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1405 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1409 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1410 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1411 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1413 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1415 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1416 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1417 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1418 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1420 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1422 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1423 rather than silently wrapping around.
1425 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1426 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1428 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1429 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1431 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1432 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1433 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1434 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1436 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1438 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1440 ** Improved robustness
1442 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1443 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1444 no matter how large the result.
1446 ** Improved portability
1448 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1449 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1451 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1453 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1454 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1455 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1457 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1458 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1462 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1463 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1465 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1467 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1468 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1469 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1470 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1472 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1473 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1475 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1476 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1477 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1479 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1481 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1482 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1484 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1485 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1487 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1489 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1490 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1492 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1493 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1495 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1496 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1497 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1499 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1501 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1503 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1507 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1509 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1510 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1511 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1513 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1514 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1516 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1517 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1518 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1520 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1521 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1523 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1524 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1525 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1526 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1528 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1529 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1531 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1532 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1533 the file system does not support it.
1535 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1537 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1538 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1540 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1542 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1543 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1545 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1546 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1547 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1548 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1550 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1551 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1554 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1555 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1556 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1557 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1559 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1560 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1561 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1562 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1564 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1565 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1567 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1569 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1570 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1571 reporting incorrect results.
1575 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1576 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1578 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1581 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1583 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1584 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1586 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1587 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1589 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1592 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1593 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1594 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1595 the file name does not look like a page range.
1597 printf has several changes:
1599 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1600 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1602 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1603 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1604 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1606 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1607 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1610 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1611 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1613 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1614 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1616 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1618 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1619 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1621 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1623 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1625 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1626 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1627 when first encountering the directory.
1631 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1632 output; POSIX requires this.
1634 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1635 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1637 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1639 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1640 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1642 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1643 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1645 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1646 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1647 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1648 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1649 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1650 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1651 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1653 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1654 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1655 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1657 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1658 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1660 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1662 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1664 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1665 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1666 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1667 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1669 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1673 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1674 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1675 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1676 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1677 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1679 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1680 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1681 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1683 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1684 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1686 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1687 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1689 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1690 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1691 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1692 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1693 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1695 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1696 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1698 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1699 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1701 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1703 nocreat do not create the output file
1704 excl fail if the output file already exists
1705 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1706 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1708 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1710 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1711 direct use direct I/O for data
1712 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1713 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1714 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1715 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1716 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1718 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1720 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1721 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1724 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1725 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1726 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1727 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1728 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1729 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1731 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1732 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1734 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1737 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1739 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1741 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1742 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1744 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1745 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1746 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1748 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1749 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1750 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1752 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1754 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1755 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1757 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1758 for compatibility with bash.
1760 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1762 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1763 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1764 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1765 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1767 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1768 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1770 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1771 ls supports TABSIZE.
1772 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1773 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1774 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1776 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1779 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1781 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1782 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1783 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1784 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1785 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1786 an offset, not as a file name.
1788 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1789 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1791 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1792 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1794 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1795 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1797 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1798 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1799 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1801 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1802 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1804 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1805 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1809 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1811 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1813 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1817 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1818 or more arguments between partitions.
1820 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1821 holes in the destination.
1823 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1824 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1825 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1826 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1827 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1828 terminates immediately.
1830 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1832 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1834 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1835 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1836 not the empty string.
1838 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1839 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1843 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1844 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1845 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1848 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1855 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1859 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1860 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1862 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1863 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1865 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1866 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1867 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1870 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1874 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1875 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1877 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1878 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1880 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1881 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1882 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1884 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1886 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1889 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1891 ** Configuration option
1893 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1894 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1898 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1899 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1903 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1904 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1905 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1908 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1909 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1910 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1911 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1912 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1913 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1914 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1917 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1921 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1922 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1923 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1925 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1926 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1928 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1930 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1931 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1932 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1933 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1935 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1937 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1938 not just the ones that reference directories
1940 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1941 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1943 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1944 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1945 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1947 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1948 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1949 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1950 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1951 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1952 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1954 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1959 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1960 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1962 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1964 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1966 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1968 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1969 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1971 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1972 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1974 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1976 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1980 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1982 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1984 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1985 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1986 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1987 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1988 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1990 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1991 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1993 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1994 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1996 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1997 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1999 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2000 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2001 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2005 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2006 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2007 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2008 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2009 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2010 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2011 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2012 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2013 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2014 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2015 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2016 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2017 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2018 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2020 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2022 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2023 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2025 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2027 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2029 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2030 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2032 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2034 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2035 without a trailing newline.
2037 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2038 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2040 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2043 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2047 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2049 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2051 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2052 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2053 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2054 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2056 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2058 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2059 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2060 be printed without leading spaces.
2062 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2063 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2068 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2069 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2070 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2072 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2074 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2075 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2077 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2078 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2080 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2081 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2083 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2085 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2087 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2089 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2090 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2092 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2094 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2096 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2097 byte offsets are specified.
2100 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2103 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2106 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2107 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2108 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2109 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2110 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2111 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2112 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2113 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2114 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2115 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2116 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2117 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2118 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2119 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2120 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2121 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2122 directory where M has write access.
2123 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2124 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2125 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2128 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2129 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2130 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2131 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2132 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2133 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2134 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2135 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2136 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2137 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2138 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2139 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2140 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2141 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2142 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2143 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2144 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2145 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2146 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2147 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2148 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2149 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2150 appeared one additional time.
2152 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2153 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2154 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2155 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2158 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2159 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2160 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2161 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2162 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2163 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2164 if there were more than 338.
2166 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2167 - false --help now exits nonzero
2170 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2171 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2172 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2173 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2176 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2177 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2178 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2179 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2180 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2183 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2184 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2185 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2186 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2187 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2188 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2189 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2192 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2193 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2194 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2195 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2196 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2197 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2199 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2200 under certain unusual conditions
2201 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2202 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2205 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2206 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2207 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2208 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2209 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2210 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2211 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2212 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2213 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2214 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2215 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2216 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2217 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2218 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2219 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2220 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2223 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2224 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2227 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2228 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2229 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2230 involving hard-linked directories
2231 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2232 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2233 character-special and block files
2236 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2237 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2238 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2239 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2240 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2241 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2242 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2243 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2244 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2246 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2247 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2248 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2249 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2250 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2251 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2252 specified on the command line.
2253 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2254 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2255 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2256 the first file untouched.
2257 * readlink: new program
2258 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2259 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2260 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2261 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2262 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2263 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2266 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2267 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2268 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2269 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2270 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2271 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2272 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2273 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2274 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2275 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2276 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2277 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2279 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2280 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2281 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2283 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2284 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2285 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2286 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2287 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2288 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2289 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2290 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2293 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2294 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2297 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2298 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2299 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2300 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2301 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2302 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2303 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2306 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2307 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2309 ========================================================================
2310 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2311 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2314 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2316 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2317 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2318 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2319 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2320 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2321 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2322 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2323 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2324 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2325 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2326 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2327 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2329 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2330 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2331 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2332 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2334 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2337 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2339 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2340 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2341 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2342 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2343 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2344 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2345 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2348 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2349 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2350 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2351 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2352 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2353 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2354 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2355 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2356 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2357 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2358 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2359 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2360 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2361 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2362 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2363 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2365 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2366 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2368 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2369 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2370 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2371 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2372 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2373 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2375 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2376 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2377 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2378 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2379 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2380 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2381 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2383 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2384 the source files in the following example:
2385 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2386 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2387 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2388 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2389 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2390 links between source files with --preserve=links
2391 * cp accepts new options:
2392 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2393 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2394 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2395 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2396 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2397 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2398 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2399 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2400 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2402 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2403 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2404 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2405 even though it's older than dest.
2406 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2407 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2408 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2409 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2410 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2412 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2413 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2414 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2415 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2416 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2417 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2418 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2420 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2421 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2422 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2424 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2425 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2426 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2427 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2428 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2429 This is the default.
2431 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2432 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2433 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2434 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2435 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2437 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2440 ========================================================================
2441 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2442 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2445 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2446 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2448 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2449 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2450 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2451 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2452 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2454 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2455 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2456 that specifies a non-directory
2459 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2460 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2461 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2462 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2463 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2464 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2465 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2466 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2467 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2468 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2469 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2470 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2471 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2472 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2473 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2474 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2475 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2476 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2477 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2478 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2479 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2480 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2481 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2482 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2484 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2485 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2486 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2488 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2490 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2491 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2493 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2494 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2495 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2496 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2497 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2499 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2500 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2501 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2502 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2503 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2505 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2507 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2508 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2509 * still more portability fixes
2510 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2511 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2513 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2515 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2517 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2519 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2520 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2521 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2522 there is any time remaining
2523 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2525 ========================================================================
2526 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2527 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2529 This package began as the union of the following:
2530 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2532 ========================================================================
2534 Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2536 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2537 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2538 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2539 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2540 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2541 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.