1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
7 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
8 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
10 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
12 ** Programs no longer installed by default
16 ** Changes in behavior
18 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
19 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
21 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
22 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
23 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
27 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
29 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
30 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
31 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
33 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
34 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
35 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
40 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
41 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
42 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
43 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
45 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
46 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
47 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
48 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
49 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
50 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
53 ** Remove deprecated options
55 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
56 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
57 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
58 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
59 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
61 ** Improved robustness
63 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
64 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
65 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
66 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
67 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
68 loss of the contents of a/f.
70 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
71 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
75 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
76 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
77 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
79 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
80 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
81 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
82 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
84 cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
85 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
86 longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
87 components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
88 d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
89 destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
90 copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
91 to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
92 doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
93 the destination is a symlink.
95 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
97 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
98 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
100 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
101 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
103 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
105 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
106 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
108 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
111 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
112 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
114 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
115 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
117 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
118 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
119 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
120 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
122 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
123 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
124 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
126 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
127 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
128 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
130 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
131 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
132 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
133 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
135 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
136 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
137 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
139 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
140 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
142 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
143 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
145 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
146 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
147 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
149 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
150 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
152 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
153 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
155 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
156 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
158 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
159 [present in the original version]
162 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
166 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
168 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
169 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
170 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
172 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
173 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
175 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
179 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
180 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
182 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
183 support but with insufficient /proc support.
185 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
186 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
188 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
189 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
190 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
191 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
192 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
193 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
195 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
196 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
199 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
200 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
202 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
205 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
206 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
207 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
209 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
210 directory is unreadable.
212 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
213 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
214 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
216 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
217 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
218 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
219 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
220 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
223 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
224 Before it would print nothing.
226 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
228 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
229 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
230 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
231 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
232 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
233 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
234 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
235 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
237 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
241 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
242 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
243 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
245 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
246 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
247 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
248 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
251 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
255 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
256 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
257 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
258 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
259 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
260 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
261 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
263 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
264 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
265 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
266 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
267 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
268 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
269 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
270 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
272 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
273 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
274 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
277 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
281 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
282 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
284 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
285 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
286 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
288 ** Improved robustness
290 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
291 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
292 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
295 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
299 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
300 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
301 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
302 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
303 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
305 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
309 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
312 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
316 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
317 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
318 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
319 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
321 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
322 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
324 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
325 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
326 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
329 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
331 ** Improved robustness
333 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
334 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
336 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
337 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
338 or NFS-mounted partition.
340 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
341 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
345 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
346 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
347 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
348 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
349 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
350 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
352 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
353 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
355 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
356 or neglect to report file removal.
358 For the "groups" command:
360 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
361 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
363 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
365 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
367 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
371 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
372 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
375 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
377 ** Changes in behavior
379 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
380 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
381 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
382 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
384 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
385 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
386 a final `./' or `../' component.
388 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
389 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
392 ** Infrastructure changes
394 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
395 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
396 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
397 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
401 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
404 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
405 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
406 dirent.d_type support.
408 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
409 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
411 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
412 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
413 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
414 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
417 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
419 ** Changes in behavior
421 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
425 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
426 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
430 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
431 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
432 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
434 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
435 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
437 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
438 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
440 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
442 ** Improved robustness
444 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
445 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
446 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
448 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
449 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
452 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
453 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
455 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
456 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
458 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
459 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
461 ** Changes in behavior
463 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
464 where the two are distinct.
466 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
467 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
468 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
469 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
470 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
471 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
472 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
473 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
474 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
475 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
476 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
477 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
478 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
479 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
480 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
481 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
482 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
484 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
485 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
486 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
488 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
489 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
490 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
491 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
494 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
495 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
499 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
500 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
501 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
502 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
504 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
505 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
506 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
508 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
509 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
510 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
511 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
512 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
515 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
516 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
518 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
519 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
520 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
521 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
523 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
524 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
525 successful and the output is easier to parse.
527 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
528 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
529 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
530 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
532 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
533 and sticky) with the -m option.
535 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
536 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
537 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
538 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
539 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
541 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
542 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
544 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
548 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
549 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
550 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
551 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
553 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
555 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
557 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
558 silently ignoring one of them.
560 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
561 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
562 containing this change was 5.92.
564 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
565 automatically newline terminated.
567 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
568 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
569 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
570 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
573 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
574 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
575 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
578 ** Scheduled for removal
580 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
581 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
583 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
584 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
585 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
586 command to unlink a directory.
588 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
589 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
590 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
591 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
595 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
596 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
597 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
598 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
599 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
600 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
604 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
605 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
607 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
609 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
610 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
611 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
613 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
614 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
617 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
618 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
620 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
621 list directories before files.
623 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
624 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
625 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
626 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
629 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
631 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
633 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
634 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
635 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
637 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
638 list of NUL-terminated file names.
642 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
643 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
644 usually printing nothing.
646 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
648 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
649 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
650 them with hard-linked directories.
652 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
653 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
654 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
656 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
657 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
658 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
660 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
663 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
664 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
666 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
667 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
669 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
670 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
672 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
673 all command-line arguments.
675 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
677 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
679 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
680 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
682 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
684 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
685 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
686 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
687 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
688 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
690 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
691 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
693 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
694 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
695 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
696 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
698 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
700 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
704 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
705 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
707 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
708 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
710 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
711 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
713 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
714 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
716 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
717 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
719 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
721 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
722 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
723 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
726 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
728 ** Build-related bug fixes
730 installing .mo files would fail
733 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
737 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
739 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
742 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
746 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
747 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
751 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
753 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
754 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
756 ** Deprecated options
758 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
759 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
761 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
765 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
767 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
768 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
769 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
770 conforming to older POSIX versions.
772 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
775 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
781 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
786 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
788 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
790 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
791 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
792 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
794 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
795 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
796 problematic usages. These include:
798 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
799 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
800 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
801 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
802 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
803 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
804 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
805 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
806 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
808 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
809 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
811 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
812 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
813 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
814 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
816 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
817 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
818 between binary and text files.
820 The following programs now always use text input/output:
824 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
828 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
829 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
832 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
834 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
835 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
837 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
838 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
839 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
841 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
843 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
845 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
846 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
847 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
851 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
853 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
854 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
856 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
857 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
858 blocks until F contains N blocks.
862 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
863 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
867 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
868 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
869 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
873 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
874 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
878 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
880 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
882 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
886 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
887 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
888 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
890 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
891 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
892 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
893 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
894 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
896 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
900 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
901 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
902 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
904 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
906 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
907 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
908 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
909 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
911 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
913 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
914 rather than silently wrapping around.
916 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
917 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
919 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
920 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
922 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
923 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
924 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
927 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
929 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
931 ** Improved robustness
933 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
934 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
935 no matter how large the result.
937 ** Improved portability
939 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
940 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
942 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
944 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
945 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
946 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
948 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
949 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
953 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
954 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
956 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
958 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
959 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
960 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
961 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
963 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
964 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
966 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
967 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
968 categories if not specified by dircolors.
970 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
972 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
973 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
975 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
976 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
978 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
980 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
981 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
983 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
984 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
986 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
987 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
988 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
990 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
992 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
994 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
998 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1000 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1001 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1002 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1004 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1005 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1007 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1008 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1009 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1011 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1012 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1014 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1015 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1016 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1017 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1019 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1020 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1022 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1023 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1024 the file system does not support it.
1026 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1028 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1029 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1031 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1033 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1034 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1036 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1037 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1038 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1039 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1041 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1042 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1045 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1046 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1047 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1048 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1050 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1051 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1052 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1053 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1055 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1056 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1058 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1060 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1061 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1062 reporting incorrect results.
1066 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1067 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1069 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1072 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1074 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1075 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1077 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1078 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1080 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1083 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1084 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1085 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1086 the file name does not look like a page range.
1088 printf has several changes:
1090 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1091 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1093 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1094 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1095 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1097 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1098 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1101 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1102 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1104 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1105 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1107 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1109 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1110 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1112 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1114 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1116 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1117 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1118 when first encountering the directory.
1122 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1123 output; POSIX requires this.
1125 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1126 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1128 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1130 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1131 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1133 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1134 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1136 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1137 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1138 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1139 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1140 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1141 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1142 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1144 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1145 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1146 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1148 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1149 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1151 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1153 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1155 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1156 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1157 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1158 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1160 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1164 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1165 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1166 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1167 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1168 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1170 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1171 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1172 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1174 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1175 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1177 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1178 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1180 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1181 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1182 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1183 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1184 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1186 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1187 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1189 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1190 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1192 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1194 nocreat do not create the output file
1195 excl fail if the output file already exists
1196 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1197 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1199 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1201 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1202 direct use direct I/O for data
1203 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1204 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1205 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1206 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1207 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1209 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1211 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1212 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1215 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1216 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1217 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1218 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1219 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1220 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1222 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1223 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1225 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1228 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1230 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1232 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1233 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1235 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1236 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1237 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1239 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1240 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1241 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1243 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1245 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1246 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1248 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1249 for compatibility with bash.
1251 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1253 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1254 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1255 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1256 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1258 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1259 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1261 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1262 ls supports TABSIZE.
1263 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1264 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1265 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1267 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1270 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1272 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1273 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1274 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1275 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1276 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1277 an offset, not as a file name.
1279 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1280 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1282 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1283 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1285 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1286 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1288 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1289 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1290 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1292 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1293 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1295 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1296 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1300 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1302 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1304 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1308 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1309 or more arguments between partitions.
1311 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1312 holes in the destination.
1314 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1315 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1316 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1317 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1318 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1319 terminates immediately.
1321 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1323 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1325 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1326 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1327 not the empty string.
1329 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1330 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1334 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1335 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1336 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1339 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1346 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1350 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1351 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1353 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1354 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1356 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1357 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1358 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1361 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1365 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1366 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1368 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1369 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1371 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1372 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1373 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1375 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1377 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1380 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1382 ** Configuration option
1384 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1385 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1389 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1390 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1394 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1395 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1396 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1399 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1400 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1401 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1402 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1403 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1404 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1405 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1408 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1412 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1413 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1414 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1416 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1417 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1419 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1421 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1422 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1423 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1424 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1426 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1428 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1429 not just the ones that reference directories
1431 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1432 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1434 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1435 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1436 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1438 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1439 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1440 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1441 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1442 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1443 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1445 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1450 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1451 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1453 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1455 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1457 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1459 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1460 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1462 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1463 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1465 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1467 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1471 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1473 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1475 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1476 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1477 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1478 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1479 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1481 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1482 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1484 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1485 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1487 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1488 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1490 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1491 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1492 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1496 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1497 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1498 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1499 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1500 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1501 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1502 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1503 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1504 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1505 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1506 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1507 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1508 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1509 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1511 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1513 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1514 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1516 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1518 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1520 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1521 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1523 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1525 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1526 without a trailing newline.
1528 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1529 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1531 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1534 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1538 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1540 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1542 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1543 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1544 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1545 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1547 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1549 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1550 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1551 be printed without leading spaces.
1553 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1554 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1559 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1560 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1561 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1563 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1565 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1566 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1568 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1569 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1571 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1572 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1574 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1576 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1578 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1580 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1581 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1583 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1585 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1587 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1588 byte offsets are specified.
1591 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1594 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1597 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1598 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1599 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1600 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1601 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1602 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1603 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1604 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1605 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1606 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1607 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1608 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1609 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1610 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1611 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1612 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1613 directory where M has write access.
1614 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1615 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1616 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1619 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1620 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1621 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1622 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1623 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1624 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1625 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1626 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1627 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1628 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1629 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1630 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1631 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1632 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1633 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1634 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1635 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1636 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1637 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1638 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1639 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1640 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1641 appeared one additional time.
1643 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1644 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1645 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1646 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1649 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1650 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1651 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1652 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1653 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1654 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1655 if there were more than 338.
1657 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1658 - false --help now exits nonzero
1661 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1662 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1663 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1664 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1667 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1668 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1669 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1670 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1671 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1674 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1675 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1676 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1677 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1678 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1679 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1680 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1683 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1684 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1685 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1686 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1687 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1688 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1690 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1691 under certain unusual conditions
1692 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1693 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1696 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1697 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1698 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1699 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1700 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1701 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1702 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1703 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1704 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1705 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1706 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1707 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1708 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1709 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1710 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1711 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1714 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1715 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1718 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1719 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1720 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1721 involving hard-linked directories
1722 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1723 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1724 character-special and block files
1727 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1728 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1729 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1730 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1731 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1732 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1733 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1734 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1735 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1737 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1738 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1739 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1740 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1741 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1742 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1743 specified on the command line.
1744 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1745 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1746 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1747 the first file untouched.
1748 * readlink: new program
1749 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1750 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1751 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1752 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1753 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1754 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1757 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1758 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1759 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1760 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1761 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1762 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1763 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1764 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1765 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1766 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1767 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1768 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1770 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1771 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1772 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1774 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1775 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1776 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1777 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1778 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1779 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1780 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1781 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1784 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1785 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1788 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1789 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1790 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1791 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1792 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1793 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1794 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1797 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1798 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1800 ========================================================================
1801 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1802 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1805 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1807 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1808 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1809 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1810 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1811 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1812 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1813 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1814 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1815 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1816 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1817 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1818 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1820 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1821 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1822 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1823 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1825 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1828 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1830 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1831 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1832 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1833 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1834 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1835 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1836 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1839 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1840 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1841 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1842 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1843 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1844 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1845 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1846 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1847 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1848 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1849 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1850 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1851 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1852 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1853 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1854 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1856 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1857 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1859 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1860 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1861 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1862 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1863 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1864 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1866 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1867 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1868 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1869 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1870 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1871 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1872 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1874 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1875 the source files in the following example:
1876 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1877 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1878 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1879 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1880 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1881 links between source files with --preserve=links
1882 * cp accepts new options:
1883 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1884 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1885 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1886 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1887 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1888 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1889 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1890 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1891 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1893 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1894 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1895 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1896 even though it's older than dest.
1897 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1898 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1899 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1900 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1901 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1903 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1904 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1905 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1906 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1907 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1908 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1909 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1911 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1912 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1913 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1915 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1916 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1917 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1918 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1919 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1920 This is the default.
1922 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1923 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1924 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1925 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1926 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1928 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1931 ========================================================================
1932 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1933 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1936 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1937 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1939 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1940 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1941 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1942 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1943 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1945 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1946 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1947 that specifies a non-directory
1950 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1951 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1952 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1953 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1954 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1955 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1956 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1957 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1958 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1959 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1960 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1961 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1962 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1963 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1964 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1965 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1966 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1967 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1968 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1969 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1970 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1971 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1972 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1973 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1975 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1976 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1977 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1979 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1981 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1982 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1984 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1985 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1986 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1987 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1988 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1990 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1991 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1992 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1993 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1994 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1996 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1998 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1999 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2000 * still more portability fixes
2001 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2002 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2004 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2006 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2008 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2010 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2011 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2012 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2013 there is any time remaining
2014 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2016 ========================================================================
2017 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2018 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2020 This package began as the union of the following:
2021 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2023 ========================================================================
2025 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2028 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2029 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2030 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2031 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2032 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2033 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.