1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
11 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
12 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
13 is still marked with a '+'.
16 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
20 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
21 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
25 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
26 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
27 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
28 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
29 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
30 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
32 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
33 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
35 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
36 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
38 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
40 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
41 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
42 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
44 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
45 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
47 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
48 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
49 used to factor large numbers.
51 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
54 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
56 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
58 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
59 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
61 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
62 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
63 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
64 maximum command-line (argv) length.
66 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
67 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
68 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
70 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
71 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
75 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
77 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
78 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
80 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
81 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
83 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
85 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
86 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
90 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
91 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
92 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
94 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
96 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
97 no matter how many files are in a given directory
99 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
100 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
101 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
103 ** Changes in behavior
105 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
106 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
109 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
113 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
115 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
116 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
117 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
119 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
120 with no USERNAME argument.
122 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
123 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
124 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
126 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
127 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
128 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
129 number of fields for some inputs.
131 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
132 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
134 ** Changes in behavior
136 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
137 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
140 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
144 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
146 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
147 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
148 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
149 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
151 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
152 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
154 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
155 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
157 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
158 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
160 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
161 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
162 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
163 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
165 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
166 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
167 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
168 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
169 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
170 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
172 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
173 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
175 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
176 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
177 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
179 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
180 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
182 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
183 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
185 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
186 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
187 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
188 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
190 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
191 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
193 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
194 in more cases when a directory is empty.
196 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
197 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
198 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
202 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
203 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
205 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
206 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
207 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
208 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
212 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
213 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
215 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
217 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
221 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
222 which have negative errno values.
226 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
230 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
234 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
235 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
238 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
242 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
243 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
244 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
246 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
247 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
248 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
249 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
253 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
254 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
255 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
256 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
259 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
263 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
265 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
266 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
267 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
270 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
274 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
275 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
277 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
279 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
281 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
283 ** Programs no longer installed by default
287 ** Changes in behavior
289 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
290 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
292 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
293 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
295 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
296 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
297 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
301 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
302 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
303 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
304 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
305 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
306 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
307 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
308 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
309 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
310 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
311 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
313 The following commands and options now support the standard size
314 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
315 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
318 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
321 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
322 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
323 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
325 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
326 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
327 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
332 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
333 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
334 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
335 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
337 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
338 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
339 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
340 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
341 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
342 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
343 of "make check" fail.
345 ** Remove deprecated options
347 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
348 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
349 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
350 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
351 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
353 ** Improved robustness
355 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
356 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
357 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
358 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
359 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
360 loss of the contents of a/f.
362 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
363 in its 35-colon command-line argument
367 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
368 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
369 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
371 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
372 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
373 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
374 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
376 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
377 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
378 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
379 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
380 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
381 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
382 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
383 destination is a symlink.
385 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
387 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
388 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
390 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
391 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
393 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
395 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
396 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
398 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
399 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
401 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
404 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
405 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
407 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
408 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
410 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
411 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
412 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
413 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
415 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
416 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
417 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
419 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
420 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
421 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
423 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
424 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
425 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
426 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
428 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
429 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
430 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
432 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
433 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
435 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
436 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
438 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
440 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
441 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
442 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
444 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
445 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
447 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
448 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
450 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
451 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
453 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
454 [present in the original version]
457 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
461 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
463 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
464 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
465 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
467 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
468 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
470 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
474 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
475 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
477 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
478 support but with insufficient /proc support.
480 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
481 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
483 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
484 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
485 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
486 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
487 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
488 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
490 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
491 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
494 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
495 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
497 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
500 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
501 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
502 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
504 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
505 directory is unreadable.
507 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
508 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
509 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
511 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
512 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
513 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
514 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
515 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
518 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
519 Before it would print nothing.
521 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
523 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
524 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
525 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
526 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
527 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
528 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
529 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
530 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
532 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
536 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
537 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
538 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
540 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
541 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
542 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
543 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
546 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
550 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
551 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
552 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
553 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
554 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
555 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
556 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
558 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
559 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
560 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
561 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
562 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
563 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
564 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
565 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
567 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
568 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
569 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
572 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
576 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
577 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
579 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
580 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
581 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
583 ** Improved robustness
585 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
586 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
587 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
590 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
594 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
595 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
596 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
597 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
598 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
600 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
604 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
607 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
611 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
612 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
613 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
614 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
616 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
617 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
619 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
620 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
621 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
624 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
626 ** Improved robustness
628 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
629 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
631 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
632 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
633 or NFS-mounted partition.
635 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
636 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
640 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
641 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
642 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
643 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
644 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
645 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
647 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
648 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
650 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
651 or neglect to report file removal.
653 For the "groups" command:
655 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
656 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
658 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
660 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
662 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
666 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
667 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
670 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
672 ** Changes in behavior
674 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
675 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
676 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
677 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
679 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
680 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
681 a final `./' or `../' component.
683 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
684 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
687 ** Infrastructure changes
689 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
690 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
691 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
692 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
696 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
699 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
700 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
701 dirent.d_type support.
703 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
704 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
706 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
707 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
708 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
709 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
712 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
714 ** Changes in behavior
716 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
720 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
721 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
725 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
726 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
727 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
729 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
730 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
732 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
733 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
735 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
737 ** Improved robustness
739 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
740 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
741 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
743 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
744 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
747 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
748 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
750 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
751 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
753 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
754 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
756 ** Changes in behavior
758 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
759 where the two are distinct.
761 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
762 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
763 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
764 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
765 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
766 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
767 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
768 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
769 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
770 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
771 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
772 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
773 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
774 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
775 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
776 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
777 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
779 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
780 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
781 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
783 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
784 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
785 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
786 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
789 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
790 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
794 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
795 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
796 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
797 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
799 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
800 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
801 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
803 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
804 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
805 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
806 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
807 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
810 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
811 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
813 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
814 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
815 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
816 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
818 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
819 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
820 successful and the output is easier to parse.
822 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
823 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
824 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
825 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
827 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
828 and sticky) with the -m option.
830 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
831 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
832 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
833 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
834 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
836 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
837 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
839 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
843 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
844 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
845 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
846 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
848 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
850 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
852 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
853 silently ignoring one of them.
855 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
856 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
857 containing this change was 5.92.
859 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
860 automatically newline terminated.
862 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
863 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
864 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
865 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
868 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
869 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
870 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
873 ** Scheduled for removal
875 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
876 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
878 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
879 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
880 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
881 command to unlink a directory.
883 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
884 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
885 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
886 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
890 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
891 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
892 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
893 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
894 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
895 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
899 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
900 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
902 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
904 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
905 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
906 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
908 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
909 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
912 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
913 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
915 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
916 list directories before files.
918 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
919 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
920 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
921 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
924 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
926 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
928 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
929 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
930 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
932 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
933 list of NUL-terminated file names.
937 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
938 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
939 usually printing nothing.
941 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
943 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
944 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
945 them with hard-linked directories.
947 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
948 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
949 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
951 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
952 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
953 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
955 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
958 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
959 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
961 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
962 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
964 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
965 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
967 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
968 all command-line arguments.
970 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
972 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
974 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
975 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
977 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
979 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
980 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
981 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
982 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
983 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
985 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
986 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
988 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
989 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
990 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
991 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
993 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
995 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
999 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1000 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1002 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1003 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1005 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1006 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1008 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1009 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1011 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1012 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1014 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1016 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1017 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1018 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1021 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1023 ** Build-related bug fixes
1025 installing .mo files would fail
1028 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1032 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1034 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1037 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1041 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1042 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1046 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1048 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1049 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1051 ** Deprecated options
1053 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1054 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1056 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1060 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1062 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1063 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1064 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1065 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1067 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1070 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1076 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1081 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1083 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1085 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1086 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1087 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1089 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1090 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1091 problematic usages. These include:
1093 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1094 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1095 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1096 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1097 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1098 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1099 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1100 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1101 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1103 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1104 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1106 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1107 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1108 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1109 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1111 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1112 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1113 between binary and text files.
1115 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1119 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1123 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1124 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1126 head tac tail tee tr
1127 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1129 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1130 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1132 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1133 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1134 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1136 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1138 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1140 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1141 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1142 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1146 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1148 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1149 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1151 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1152 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1153 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1157 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1158 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1162 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1163 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1164 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1168 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1169 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1173 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1175 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1177 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1181 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1182 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1183 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1185 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1186 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1187 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1188 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1189 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1191 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1195 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1196 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1197 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1199 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1201 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1202 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1203 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1204 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1206 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1208 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1209 rather than silently wrapping around.
1211 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1212 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1214 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1215 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1217 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1218 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1219 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1220 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1222 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1224 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1226 ** Improved robustness
1228 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1229 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1230 no matter how large the result.
1232 ** Improved portability
1234 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1235 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1237 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1239 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1240 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1241 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1243 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1244 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1248 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1249 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1251 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1253 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1254 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1255 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1256 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1258 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1259 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1261 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1262 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1263 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1265 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1267 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1268 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1270 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1271 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1273 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1275 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1276 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1278 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1279 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1281 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1282 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1283 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1285 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1287 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1289 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1293 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1295 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1296 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1297 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1299 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1300 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1302 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1303 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1304 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1306 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1307 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1309 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1310 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1311 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1312 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1314 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1315 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1317 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1318 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1319 the file system does not support it.
1321 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1323 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1324 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1326 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1328 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1329 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1331 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1332 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1333 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1334 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1336 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1337 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1340 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1341 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1342 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1343 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1345 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1346 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1347 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1348 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1350 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1351 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1353 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1355 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1356 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1357 reporting incorrect results.
1361 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1362 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1364 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1367 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1369 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1370 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1372 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1373 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1375 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1378 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1379 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1380 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1381 the file name does not look like a page range.
1383 printf has several changes:
1385 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1386 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1388 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1389 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1390 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1392 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1393 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1396 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1397 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1399 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1400 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1402 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1404 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1405 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1407 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1409 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1411 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1412 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1413 when first encountering the directory.
1417 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1418 output; POSIX requires this.
1420 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1421 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1423 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1425 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1426 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1428 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1429 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1431 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1432 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1433 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1434 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1435 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1436 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1437 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1439 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1440 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1441 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1443 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1444 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1446 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1448 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1450 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1451 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1452 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1453 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1455 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1459 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1460 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1461 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1462 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1463 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1465 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1466 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1467 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1469 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1470 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1472 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1473 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1475 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1476 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1477 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1478 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1479 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1481 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1482 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1484 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1485 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1487 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1489 nocreat do not create the output file
1490 excl fail if the output file already exists
1491 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1492 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1494 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1496 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1497 direct use direct I/O for data
1498 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1499 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1500 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1501 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1502 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1504 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1506 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1507 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1510 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1511 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1512 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1513 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1514 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1515 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1517 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1518 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1520 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1523 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1525 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1527 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1528 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1530 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1531 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1532 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1534 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1535 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1536 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1538 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1540 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1541 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1543 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1544 for compatibility with bash.
1546 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1548 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1549 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1550 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1551 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1553 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1554 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1556 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1557 ls supports TABSIZE.
1558 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1559 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1560 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1562 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1565 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1567 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1568 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1569 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1570 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1571 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1572 an offset, not as a file name.
1574 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1575 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1577 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1578 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1580 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1581 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1583 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1584 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1585 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1587 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1588 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1590 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1591 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1595 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1597 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1599 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1603 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1604 or more arguments between partitions.
1606 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1607 holes in the destination.
1609 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1610 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1611 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1612 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1613 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1614 terminates immediately.
1616 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1618 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1620 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1621 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1622 not the empty string.
1624 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1625 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1629 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1630 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1631 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1634 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1641 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1645 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1646 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1648 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1649 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1651 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1652 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1653 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1656 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1660 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1661 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1663 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1664 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1666 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1667 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1668 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1670 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1672 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1675 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1677 ** Configuration option
1679 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1680 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1684 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1685 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1689 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1690 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1691 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1694 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1695 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1696 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1697 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1698 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1699 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1700 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1703 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1707 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1708 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1709 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1711 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1712 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1714 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1716 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1717 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1718 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1719 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1721 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1723 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1724 not just the ones that reference directories
1726 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1727 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1729 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1730 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1731 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1733 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1734 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1735 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1736 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1737 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1738 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1740 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1745 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1746 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1748 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1750 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1752 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1754 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1755 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1757 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1758 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1760 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1762 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1766 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1768 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1770 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1771 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1772 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1773 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1774 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1776 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1777 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1779 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1780 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1782 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1783 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1785 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1786 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1787 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1791 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1792 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1793 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1794 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1795 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1796 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1797 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1798 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1799 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1800 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1801 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1802 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1803 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1804 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1806 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1808 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1809 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1811 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1813 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1815 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1816 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1818 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1820 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1821 without a trailing newline.
1823 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1824 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1826 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1829 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1833 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1835 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1837 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1838 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1839 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1840 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1842 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1844 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1845 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1846 be printed without leading spaces.
1848 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1849 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1854 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1855 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1856 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1858 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1860 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1861 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1863 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1864 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1866 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1867 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1869 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1871 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1873 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1875 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1876 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1878 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1880 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1882 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1883 byte offsets are specified.
1886 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1889 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1892 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1893 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1894 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1895 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1896 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1897 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1898 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1899 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1900 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1901 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1902 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1903 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1904 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1905 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1906 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1907 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1908 directory where M has write access.
1909 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1910 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1911 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1914 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1915 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1916 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1917 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1918 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1919 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1920 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1921 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1922 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1923 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1924 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1925 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1926 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1927 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1928 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1929 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1930 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1931 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1932 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1933 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1934 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1935 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1936 appeared one additional time.
1938 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1939 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1940 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1941 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1944 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1945 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1946 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1947 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1948 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1949 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1950 if there were more than 338.
1952 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1953 - false --help now exits nonzero
1956 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1957 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1958 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1959 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1962 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1963 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1964 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1965 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1966 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1969 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1970 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1971 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1972 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1973 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1974 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1975 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1978 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1979 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1980 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1981 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1982 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1983 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1985 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1986 under certain unusual conditions
1987 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1988 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1991 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1992 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1993 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1994 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1995 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1996 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1997 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1998 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1999 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2000 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2001 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2002 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2003 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2004 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2005 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2006 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2009 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2010 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2013 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2014 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2015 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2016 involving hard-linked directories
2017 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2018 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2019 character-special and block files
2022 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2023 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2024 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2025 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2026 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2027 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2028 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2029 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2030 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2032 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2033 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2034 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2035 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2036 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2037 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2038 specified on the command line.
2039 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2040 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2041 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2042 the first file untouched.
2043 * readlink: new program
2044 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2045 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2046 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2047 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2048 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2049 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2052 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2053 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2054 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2055 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2056 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2057 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2058 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2059 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2060 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2061 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2062 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2063 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2065 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2066 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2067 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2069 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2070 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2071 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2072 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2073 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2074 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2075 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2076 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2079 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2080 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2083 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2084 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2085 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2086 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2087 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2088 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2089 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2092 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2093 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2095 ========================================================================
2096 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2097 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2100 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2102 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2103 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2104 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2105 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2106 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2107 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2108 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2109 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2110 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2111 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2112 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2113 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2115 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2116 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2117 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2118 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2120 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2123 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2125 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2126 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2127 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2128 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2129 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2130 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2131 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2134 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2135 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2136 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2137 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2138 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2139 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2140 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2141 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2142 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2143 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2144 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2145 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2146 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2147 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2148 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2149 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2151 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2152 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2154 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2155 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2156 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2157 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2158 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2159 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2161 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2162 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2163 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2164 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2165 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2166 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2167 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2169 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2170 the source files in the following example:
2171 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2172 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2173 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2174 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2175 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2176 links between source files with --preserve=links
2177 * cp accepts new options:
2178 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2179 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2180 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2181 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2182 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2183 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2184 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2185 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2186 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2188 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2189 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2190 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2191 even though it's older than dest.
2192 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2193 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2194 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2195 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2196 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2198 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2199 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2200 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2201 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2202 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2203 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2204 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2206 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2207 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2208 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2210 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2211 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2212 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2213 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2214 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2215 This is the default.
2217 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2218 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2219 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2220 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2221 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2223 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2226 ========================================================================
2227 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2228 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2231 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2232 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2234 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2235 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2236 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2237 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2238 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2240 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2241 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2242 that specifies a non-directory
2245 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2246 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2247 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2248 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2249 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2250 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2251 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2252 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2253 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2254 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2255 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2256 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2257 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2258 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2259 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2260 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2261 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2262 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2263 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2264 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2265 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2266 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2267 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2268 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2270 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2271 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2272 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2274 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2276 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2277 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2279 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2280 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2281 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2282 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2283 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2285 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2286 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2287 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2288 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2289 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2291 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2293 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2294 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2295 * still more portability fixes
2296 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2297 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2299 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2301 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2303 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2305 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2306 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2307 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2308 there is any time remaining
2309 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2311 ========================================================================
2312 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2313 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2315 This package began as the union of the following:
2316 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2318 ========================================================================
2320 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2323 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2324 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2325 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2326 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2327 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2328 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.