1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
8 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
9 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
11 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
12 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
13 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
15 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
16 processes will not intersperse their output.
17 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
18 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
22 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
23 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
25 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
26 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
29 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
33 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
34 when the source file doesn't have write access.
35 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
37 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
38 to accommodate leap seconds.
39 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
41 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
42 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
43 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
45 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
47 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
48 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
49 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
51 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
52 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
53 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
54 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
55 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
59 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
60 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
61 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
62 directory or a symlink to a directory.
64 ** Changes in behavior
66 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
67 environment variable is set.
69 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
70 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
71 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
75 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
76 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
77 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
78 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
80 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
81 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
82 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
83 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
87 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
88 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
89 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
91 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
92 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
93 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
94 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
95 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
96 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
99 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
100 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
103 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
107 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
108 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
109 and libraries tested at configure time.
110 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
112 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
113 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
115 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
116 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
118 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
119 printing a summary to stderr.
120 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
122 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
123 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
124 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
126 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
127 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
129 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
130 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
131 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
132 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
134 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
135 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
136 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
137 which is relatively unusual.
138 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
140 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
141 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
142 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
143 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
144 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
145 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
146 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
150 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
151 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
152 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
153 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
154 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
158 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
159 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
161 ** Changes in behavior
163 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
164 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
165 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
166 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
167 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
170 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
174 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
175 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
177 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
178 before data copying has started.
180 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
181 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
183 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
184 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
185 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
186 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
188 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
189 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
190 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
191 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
193 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
198 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
199 for its standard streams.
201 ** Changes in behavior
203 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
204 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
205 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
206 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
207 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
208 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
210 ** Deprecated options
212 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
213 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
217 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
219 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
220 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
223 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
225 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
226 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
228 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
229 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
232 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
236 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
237 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
238 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
239 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
241 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
242 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
243 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
244 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
245 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
250 make check: two tests have been corrected
254 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
255 inherited from gnulib.
258 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
262 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
263 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
264 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
265 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
267 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
268 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
270 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
272 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
273 systems without xattr support.
275 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
276 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
277 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
279 ** Changes in behavior
281 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
282 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
283 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
284 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
286 ** Improved robustness
288 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
289 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
290 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
291 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
292 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
293 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
294 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
295 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
296 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
300 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
301 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
303 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
304 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
305 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
306 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
307 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
310 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
314 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
315 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
316 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
320 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
321 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
322 data was read, or on process exit.
323 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
325 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
326 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
327 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
328 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
330 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
331 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
332 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
333 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
335 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
336 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
338 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
339 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
341 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
342 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
343 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
345 ** Changes in behavior
347 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
348 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
349 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
351 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
352 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
354 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
355 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
356 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
359 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
363 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
365 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
366 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
367 install: Never copies xattrs
369 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
370 from overwriting any existing destination file
372 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
373 mode where this feature is available.
375 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
376 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
377 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
378 do not modify the destination at all.
380 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
382 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
386 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
387 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
389 cp uses much less memory in some situations
391 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
392 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
394 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
395 processing the first file name
397 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
398 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
399 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
400 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
402 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
403 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
405 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
406 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
409 ** Changes in behavior
411 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
412 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
414 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
415 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
416 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
418 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
419 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
421 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
423 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
424 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
425 is still marked with a '+'.
428 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
432 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
433 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
437 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
438 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
439 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
440 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
441 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
442 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
444 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
445 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
447 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
448 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
450 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
452 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
453 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
454 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
456 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
457 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
459 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
460 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
461 used to factor large numbers.
463 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
466 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
468 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
470 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
471 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
473 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
474 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
475 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
476 maximum command-line (argv) length.
478 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
479 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
480 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
482 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
483 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
487 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
489 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
490 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
492 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
493 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
495 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
497 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
498 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
502 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
503 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
504 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
506 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
508 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
509 no matter how many files are in a given directory
511 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
512 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
513 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
515 ** Changes in behavior
517 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
518 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
521 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
525 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
527 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
528 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
529 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
531 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
532 with no USERNAME argument.
534 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
535 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
536 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
538 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
539 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
540 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
541 number of fields for some inputs.
543 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
544 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
546 ** Changes in behavior
548 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
549 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
552 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
556 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
558 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
559 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
560 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
561 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
563 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
564 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
566 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
567 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
569 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
570 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
572 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
573 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
574 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
575 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
577 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
578 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
579 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
580 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
581 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
582 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
584 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
585 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
587 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
588 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
589 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
591 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
592 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
594 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
595 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
597 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
598 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
599 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
600 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
602 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
603 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
605 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
606 in more cases when a directory is empty.
608 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
609 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
610 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
614 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
615 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
617 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
618 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
619 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
620 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
624 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
625 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
627 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
629 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
633 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
634 which have negative errno values.
638 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
642 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
646 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
647 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
650 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
654 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
655 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
656 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
658 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
659 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
660 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
661 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
665 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
666 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
667 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
668 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
671 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
675 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
677 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
678 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
679 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
682 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
686 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
687 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
689 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
691 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
693 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
695 ** Programs no longer installed by default
699 ** Changes in behavior
701 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
702 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
704 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
705 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
707 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
708 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
709 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
713 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
714 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
715 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
716 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
717 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
718 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
719 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
720 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
721 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
722 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
723 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
725 The following commands and options now support the standard size
726 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
727 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
730 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
733 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
734 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
735 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
737 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
738 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
739 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
744 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
745 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
746 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
747 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
749 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
750 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
751 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
752 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
753 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
754 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
755 of "make check" fail.
757 ** Remove deprecated options
759 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
760 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
761 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
762 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
763 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
765 ** Improved robustness
767 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
768 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
769 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
770 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
771 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
772 loss of the contents of a/f.
774 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
775 in its 35-colon command-line argument
779 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
780 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
781 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
783 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
784 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
785 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
786 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
788 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
789 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
790 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
791 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
792 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
793 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
794 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
795 destination is a symlink.
797 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
799 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
800 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
802 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
803 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
805 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
807 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
808 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
810 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
811 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
813 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
816 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
817 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
819 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
820 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
822 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
823 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
824 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
825 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
827 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
828 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
829 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
831 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
832 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
833 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
835 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
836 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
837 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
838 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
840 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
841 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
842 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
844 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
845 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
847 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
848 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
850 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
852 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
853 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
854 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
856 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
857 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
859 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
860 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
862 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
863 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
865 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
866 [present in the original version]
869 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
873 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
875 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
876 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
877 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
879 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
880 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
882 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
886 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
887 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
889 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
890 support but with insufficient /proc support.
892 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
893 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
895 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
896 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
897 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
898 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
899 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
900 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
902 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
903 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
906 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
907 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
909 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
912 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
913 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
914 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
916 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
917 directory is unreadable.
919 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
920 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
921 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
923 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
924 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
925 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
926 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
927 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
930 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
931 Before it would print nothing.
933 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
935 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
936 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
937 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
938 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
939 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
940 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
941 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
942 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
944 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
948 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
949 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
950 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
952 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
953 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
954 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
955 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
958 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
962 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
963 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
964 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
965 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
966 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
967 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
968 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
970 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
971 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
972 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
973 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
974 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
975 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
976 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
977 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
979 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
980 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
981 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
984 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
988 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
989 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
991 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
992 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
993 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
995 ** Improved robustness
997 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
998 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
999 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1002 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1006 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1007 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1008 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1009 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1010 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1012 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1016 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1019 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1023 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1024 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1025 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1026 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1028 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1029 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1031 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1032 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1033 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1036 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1038 ** Improved robustness
1040 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1041 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1043 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1044 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1045 or NFS-mounted partition.
1047 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1048 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1052 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1053 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1054 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1055 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1056 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1057 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1059 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1060 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1062 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1063 or neglect to report file removal.
1065 For the "groups" command:
1067 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1068 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1070 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1072 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1074 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1078 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1079 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1082 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1084 ** Changes in behavior
1086 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1087 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1088 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1089 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1091 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1092 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1093 a final `./' or `../' component.
1095 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1096 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1097 this only for pipes.
1099 ** Infrastructure changes
1101 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1102 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1103 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1104 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1108 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1109 name is "." or "..".
1111 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1112 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1113 dirent.d_type support.
1115 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1116 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1118 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1119 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1120 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1121 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1124 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1126 ** Changes in behavior
1128 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1132 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1133 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1137 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1138 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1139 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1141 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1142 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1144 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1145 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1147 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1149 ** Improved robustness
1151 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1152 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1153 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1155 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1156 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1159 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1160 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1162 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1163 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1165 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1166 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1168 ** Changes in behavior
1170 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1171 where the two are distinct.
1173 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1174 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1175 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1176 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1177 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1178 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1179 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1180 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1181 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1182 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1183 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1184 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1185 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1186 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1187 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1188 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1189 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1191 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1192 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1193 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1195 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1196 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1197 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1198 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1201 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1202 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1206 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1207 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1208 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1209 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1211 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1212 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1213 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1215 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1216 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1217 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1218 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1219 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1222 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1223 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1225 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1226 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1227 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1228 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1230 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1231 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1232 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1234 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1235 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1236 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1237 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1239 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1240 and sticky) with the -m option.
1242 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1243 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1244 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1245 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1246 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1248 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1249 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1251 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1255 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1256 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1257 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1258 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1260 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1262 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1264 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1265 silently ignoring one of them.
1267 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1268 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1269 containing this change was 5.92.
1271 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1272 automatically newline terminated.
1274 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1275 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1276 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1277 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1280 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1281 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1282 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1285 ** Scheduled for removal
1287 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1288 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1290 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1291 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1292 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1293 command to unlink a directory.
1295 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1296 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1297 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1298 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1302 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1303 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1304 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1305 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1306 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1307 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1311 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1312 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1314 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1316 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1317 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1318 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1320 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1321 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1324 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1325 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1327 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1328 list directories before files.
1330 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1331 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1332 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1333 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1336 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1338 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1340 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1341 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1342 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1344 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1345 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1349 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1350 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1351 usually printing nothing.
1353 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1355 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1356 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1357 them with hard-linked directories.
1359 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1360 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1361 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1363 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1364 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1365 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1367 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1370 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1371 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1373 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1374 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1376 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1377 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1379 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1380 all command-line arguments.
1382 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1384 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1386 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1387 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1389 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1391 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1392 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1393 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1394 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1395 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1397 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1398 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1400 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1401 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1402 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1403 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1405 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1407 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1411 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1412 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1414 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1415 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1417 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1418 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1420 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1421 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1423 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1424 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1426 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1428 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1429 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1430 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1433 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1435 ** Build-related bug fixes
1437 installing .mo files would fail
1440 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1444 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1446 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1449 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1453 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1454 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1458 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1460 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1461 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1463 ** Deprecated options
1465 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1466 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1468 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1472 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1474 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1475 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1476 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1477 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1479 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1482 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1488 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1493 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1495 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1497 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1498 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1499 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1501 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1502 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1503 problematic usages. These include:
1505 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1506 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1507 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1508 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1509 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1510 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1511 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1512 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1513 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1515 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1516 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1518 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1519 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1520 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1521 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1523 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1524 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1525 between binary and text files.
1527 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1531 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1535 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1536 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1538 head tac tail tee tr
1539 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1541 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1542 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1544 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1545 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1546 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1548 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1550 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1552 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1553 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1554 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1558 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1560 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1561 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1563 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1564 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1565 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1569 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1570 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1574 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1575 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1576 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1580 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1581 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1585 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1587 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1589 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1593 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1594 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1595 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1597 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1598 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1599 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1600 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1601 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1603 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1607 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1608 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1609 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1611 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1613 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1614 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1615 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1616 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1618 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1620 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1621 rather than silently wrapping around.
1623 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1624 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1626 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1627 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1629 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1630 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1631 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1632 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1634 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1636 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1638 ** Improved robustness
1640 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1641 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1642 no matter how large the result.
1644 ** Improved portability
1646 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1647 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1649 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1651 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1652 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1653 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1655 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1656 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1660 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1661 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1663 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1665 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1666 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1667 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1668 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1670 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1671 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1673 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1674 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1675 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1677 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1679 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1680 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1682 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1683 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1685 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1687 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1688 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1690 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1691 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1693 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1694 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1695 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1697 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1699 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1701 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1705 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1707 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1708 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1709 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1711 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1712 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1714 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1715 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1716 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1718 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1719 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1721 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1722 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1723 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1724 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1726 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1727 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1729 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1730 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1731 the file system does not support it.
1733 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1735 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1736 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1738 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1740 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1741 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1743 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1744 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1745 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1746 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1748 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1749 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1752 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1753 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1754 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1755 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1757 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1758 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1759 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1760 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1762 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1763 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1765 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1767 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1768 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1769 reporting incorrect results.
1773 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1774 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1776 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1779 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1781 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1782 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1784 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1785 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1787 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1790 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1791 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1792 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1793 the file name does not look like a page range.
1795 printf has several changes:
1797 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1798 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1800 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1801 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1802 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1804 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1805 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1808 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1809 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1811 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1812 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1814 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1816 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1817 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1819 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1821 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1823 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1824 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1825 when first encountering the directory.
1829 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1830 output; POSIX requires this.
1832 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1833 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1835 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1837 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1838 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1840 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1841 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1843 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1844 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1845 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1846 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1847 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1848 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1849 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1851 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1852 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1853 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1855 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1856 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1858 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1860 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1862 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1863 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1864 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1865 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1867 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1871 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1872 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1873 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1874 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1875 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1877 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1878 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1879 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1881 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1882 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1884 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1885 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1887 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1888 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1889 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1890 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1891 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1893 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1894 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1896 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1897 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1899 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1901 nocreat do not create the output file
1902 excl fail if the output file already exists
1903 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1904 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1906 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1908 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1909 direct use direct I/O for data
1910 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1911 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1912 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1913 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1914 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1916 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1918 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1919 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1922 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1923 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1924 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1925 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1926 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1927 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1929 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1930 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1932 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1935 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1937 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1939 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1940 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1942 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1943 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1944 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1946 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1947 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1948 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1950 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1952 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1953 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1955 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1956 for compatibility with bash.
1958 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1960 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1961 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1962 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1963 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1965 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1966 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1968 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1969 ls supports TABSIZE.
1970 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1971 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1972 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1974 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1977 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1979 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1980 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1981 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1982 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1983 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1984 an offset, not as a file name.
1986 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1987 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1989 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1990 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1992 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1993 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1995 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1996 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1997 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1999 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2000 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2002 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2003 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2007 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2009 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2011 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2015 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2016 or more arguments between partitions.
2018 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2019 holes in the destination.
2021 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2022 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2023 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2024 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2025 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2026 terminates immediately.
2028 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2030 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2032 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2033 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2034 not the empty string.
2036 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2037 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2041 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2042 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2043 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2046 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2053 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2057 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2058 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2060 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2061 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2063 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2064 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2065 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2068 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2072 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2073 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2075 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2076 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2078 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2079 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2080 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2082 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2084 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2087 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2089 ** Configuration option
2091 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2092 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2096 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2097 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2101 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2102 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2103 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2106 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2107 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2108 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2109 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2110 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2111 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2112 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2115 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2119 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2120 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2121 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2123 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2124 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2126 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2128 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2129 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2130 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2131 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2133 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2135 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2136 not just the ones that reference directories
2138 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2139 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2141 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2142 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2143 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2145 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2146 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2147 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2148 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2149 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2150 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2152 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2157 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2158 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2160 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2162 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2164 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2166 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2167 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2169 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2170 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2172 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2174 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2178 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2180 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2182 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2183 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2184 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2185 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2186 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2188 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2189 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2191 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2192 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2194 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2195 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2197 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2198 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2199 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2203 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2204 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2205 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2206 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2207 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2208 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2209 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2210 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2211 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2212 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2213 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2214 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2215 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2216 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2218 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2220 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2221 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2223 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2225 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2227 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2228 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2230 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2232 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2233 without a trailing newline.
2235 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2236 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2238 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2241 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2245 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2247 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2249 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2250 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2251 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2252 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2254 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2256 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2257 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2258 be printed without leading spaces.
2260 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2261 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2266 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2267 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2268 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2270 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2272 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2273 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2275 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2276 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2278 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2279 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2281 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2283 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2285 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2287 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2288 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2290 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2292 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2294 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2295 byte offsets are specified.
2298 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2301 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2304 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2305 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2306 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2307 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2308 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2309 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2310 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2311 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2312 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2313 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2314 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2315 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2316 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2317 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2318 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2319 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2320 directory where M has write access.
2321 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2322 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2323 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2326 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2327 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2328 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2329 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2330 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2331 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2332 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2333 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2334 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2335 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2336 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2337 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2338 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2339 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2340 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2341 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2342 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2343 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2344 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2345 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2346 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2347 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2348 appeared one additional time.
2350 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2351 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2352 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2353 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2356 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2357 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2358 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2359 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2360 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2361 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2362 if there were more than 338.
2364 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2365 - false --help now exits nonzero
2368 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2369 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2370 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2371 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2374 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2375 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2376 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2377 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2378 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2381 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2382 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2383 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2384 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2385 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2386 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2387 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2390 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2391 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2392 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2393 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2394 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2395 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2397 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2398 under certain unusual conditions
2399 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2400 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2403 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2404 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2405 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2406 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2407 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2408 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2409 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2410 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2411 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2412 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2413 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2414 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2415 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2416 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2417 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2418 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2421 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2422 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2425 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2426 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2427 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2428 involving hard-linked directories
2429 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2430 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2431 character-special and block files
2434 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2435 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2436 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2437 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2438 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2439 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2440 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2441 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2442 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2444 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2445 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2446 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2447 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2448 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2449 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2450 specified on the command line.
2451 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2452 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2453 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2454 the first file untouched.
2455 * readlink: new program
2456 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2457 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2458 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2459 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2460 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2461 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2464 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2465 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2466 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2467 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2468 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2469 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2470 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2471 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2472 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2473 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2474 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2475 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2477 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2478 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2479 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2481 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2482 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2483 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2484 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2485 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2486 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2487 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2488 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2491 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2492 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2495 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2496 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2497 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2498 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2499 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2500 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2501 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2504 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2505 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2507 ========================================================================
2508 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2509 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2512 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2514 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2515 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2516 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2517 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2518 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2519 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2520 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2521 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2522 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2523 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2524 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2525 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2527 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2528 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2529 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2530 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2532 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2535 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2537 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2538 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2539 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2540 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2541 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2542 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2543 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2546 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2547 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2548 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2549 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2550 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2551 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2552 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2553 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2554 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2555 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2556 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2557 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2558 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2559 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2560 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2561 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2563 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2564 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2566 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2567 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2568 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2569 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2570 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2571 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2573 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2574 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2575 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2576 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2577 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2578 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2579 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2581 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2582 the source files in the following example:
2583 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2584 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2585 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2586 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2587 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2588 links between source files with --preserve=links
2589 * cp accepts new options:
2590 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2591 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2592 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2593 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2594 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2595 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2596 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2597 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2598 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2600 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2601 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2602 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2603 even though it's older than dest.
2604 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2605 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2606 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2607 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2608 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2610 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2611 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2612 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2613 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2614 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2615 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2616 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2618 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2619 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2620 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2622 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2623 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2624 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2625 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2626 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2627 This is the default.
2629 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2630 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2631 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2632 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2633 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2635 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2638 ========================================================================
2639 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2640 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2643 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2644 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2646 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2647 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2648 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2649 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2650 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2652 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2653 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2654 that specifies a non-directory
2657 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2658 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2659 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2660 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2661 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2662 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2663 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2664 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2665 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2666 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2667 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2668 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2669 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2670 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2671 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2672 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2673 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2674 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2675 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2676 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2677 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2678 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2679 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2680 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2682 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2683 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2684 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2686 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2688 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2689 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2691 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2692 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2693 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2694 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2695 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2697 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2698 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2699 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2700 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2701 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2703 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2705 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2706 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2707 * still more portability fixes
2708 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2709 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2711 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2713 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2715 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2717 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2718 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2719 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2720 there is any time remaining
2721 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2723 ========================================================================
2724 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2725 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2727 This package began as the union of the following:
2728 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2730 ========================================================================
2732 Copyright (C) 2001-2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2734 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2735 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2736 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2737 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2738 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2739 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.