1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR
8 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
10 cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
11 delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
12 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
14 wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
15 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
19 dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options,
20 which will discard any cache associated with the files, or
21 processed portion thereof.
24 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
28 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
29 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
30 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
31 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
32 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
34 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
35 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
37 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
38 reject file names invalid for that file system.
40 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
41 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
45 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
46 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
47 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
48 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
49 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
50 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
51 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
52 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
54 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
55 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
56 the same number of fields are output for each line.
58 ** Changes in behavior
60 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
61 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
62 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
65 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
69 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
70 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
71 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
74 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
78 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
79 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
81 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
82 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
84 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
85 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
87 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
88 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
89 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
90 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
92 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
93 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
95 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
96 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
97 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
99 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
101 ** Changes in behavior
103 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
104 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
105 to the number of available processors.
109 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
112 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
116 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
117 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
118 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
119 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
121 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
122 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
123 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
125 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
126 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
128 ** Changes in behavior
130 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
131 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
133 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
134 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
135 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
136 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
137 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
138 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
140 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
141 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
142 the same way as the others.
145 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
149 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
150 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
151 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
153 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
154 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
156 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
157 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
158 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
160 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
161 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
163 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
164 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
166 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
167 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
168 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
170 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
171 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
172 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
173 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
177 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
178 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
180 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
183 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
184 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
186 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
188 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
189 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
190 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
192 ** Changes in behavior
194 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
195 rather than its aliased target.
197 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
198 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
199 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
201 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
202 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
203 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
204 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
205 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
206 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
207 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
208 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
210 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
212 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
214 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
215 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
218 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
219 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
220 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
221 control like taskset for example.
223 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
225 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
226 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
227 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
228 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
229 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
230 includes %C when context information is available.
232 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
233 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
234 rather than a file system attribute.
236 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
237 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
238 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
239 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
241 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
242 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
243 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
245 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
246 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
247 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
250 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
254 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
255 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
257 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
259 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
260 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
262 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
263 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
264 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
265 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
267 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
268 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
269 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
273 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
274 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
276 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
277 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
278 duration after the initial signal was sent.
280 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
281 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
282 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
283 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
284 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
285 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
286 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
287 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
288 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
290 ** Changes in behavior
292 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
293 sequence when it would be a no-op.
295 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
296 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
299 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
303 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
304 of available processors, which may not have been the case
305 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
306 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
310 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
311 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
313 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
314 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
315 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
316 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
318 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
319 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
320 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
323 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
327 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
328 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
329 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
331 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
332 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
333 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
335 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
336 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
338 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
339 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
340 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
341 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
343 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
344 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
345 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
347 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
348 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
349 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
350 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
352 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
353 renamed-aside and then recreated.
354 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
356 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
357 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
358 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
359 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
361 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
362 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
363 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
365 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
366 processes will not intersperse their output.
367 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
370 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
374 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
375 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
377 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
378 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
380 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
381 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
382 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
383 the presence of the empty string argument.
384 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
386 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
387 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
388 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
389 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
391 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
392 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
394 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
395 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
396 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
398 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
399 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
400 and with a malicious user on the same system
401 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
402 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
405 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
409 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
410 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
411 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
413 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
414 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
415 offending directory and all "contents."
417 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
418 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
419 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
421 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
422 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
423 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
425 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
426 processes will not intersperse their output.
427 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
428 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
430 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
431 output the name of the file to stdout.
432 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
434 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
435 call fails with errno == EACCES.
436 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
438 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
439 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
442 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
443 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
444 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
446 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
447 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
448 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
449 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
450 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
451 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
453 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
454 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
455 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
456 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
458 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
459 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
461 ** Changes in behavior
463 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
464 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
465 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
466 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
467 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
469 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
470 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
471 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
472 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
474 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
476 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
477 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
478 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
479 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
480 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
484 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
488 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
489 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
491 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
492 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
494 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
495 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
496 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
498 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
499 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
502 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
506 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
507 when the source file doesn't have write access.
508 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
510 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
511 to accommodate leap seconds.
512 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
514 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
515 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
516 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
518 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
520 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
521 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
522 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
524 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
525 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
526 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
527 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
528 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
532 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
533 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
534 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
535 directory or a symlink to a directory.
537 ** Changes in behavior
539 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
540 environment variable is set.
542 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
543 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
544 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
548 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
549 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
550 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
551 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
553 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
554 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
555 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
556 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
560 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
561 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
562 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
564 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
565 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
566 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
567 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
568 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
569 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
572 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
573 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
576 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
580 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
581 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
582 and libraries tested at configure time.
583 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
585 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
586 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
588 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
589 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
591 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
592 printing a summary to stderr.
593 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
595 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
596 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
597 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
599 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
600 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
602 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
603 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
604 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
605 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
607 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
608 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
609 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
610 which is relatively unusual.
611 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
613 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
614 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
615 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
616 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
617 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
618 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
619 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
623 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
624 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
625 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
626 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
627 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
631 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
632 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
634 ** Changes in behavior
636 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
637 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
638 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
639 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
640 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
643 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
647 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
648 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
650 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
651 before data copying has started.
653 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
654 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
656 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
657 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
658 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
659 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
661 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
662 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
663 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
664 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
666 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
671 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
672 for its standard streams.
674 ** Changes in behavior
676 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
677 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
678 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
679 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
680 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
681 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
683 ** Deprecated options
685 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
686 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
690 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
692 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
693 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
696 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
698 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
699 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
701 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
702 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
705 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
709 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
710 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
711 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
712 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
714 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
715 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
716 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
717 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
718 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
723 make check: two tests have been corrected
727 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
728 inherited from gnulib.
731 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
735 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
736 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
737 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
738 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
740 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
741 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
743 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
745 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
746 systems without xattr support.
748 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
749 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
750 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
752 ** Changes in behavior
754 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
755 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
756 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
757 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
759 ** Improved robustness
761 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
762 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
763 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
764 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
765 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
766 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
767 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
768 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
769 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
773 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
774 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
776 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
777 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
778 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
779 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
780 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
783 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
787 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
788 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
789 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
793 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
794 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
795 data was read, or on process exit.
796 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
798 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
799 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
800 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
801 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
803 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
804 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
805 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
806 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
808 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
809 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
811 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
812 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
814 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
815 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
816 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
818 ** Changes in behavior
820 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
821 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
822 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
824 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
825 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
827 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
828 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
829 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
832 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
836 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
838 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
839 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
840 install: Never copies xattrs
842 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
843 from overwriting any existing destination file
845 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
846 mode where this feature is available.
848 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
849 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
850 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
851 do not modify the destination at all.
853 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
855 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
859 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
860 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
862 cp uses much less memory in some situations
864 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
865 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
867 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
868 processing the first file name
870 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
871 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
872 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
873 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
875 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
876 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
878 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
879 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
882 ** Changes in behavior
884 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
885 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
887 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
888 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
889 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
891 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
892 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
894 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
896 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
897 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
898 is still marked with a '+'.
901 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
905 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
906 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
910 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
911 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
912 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
913 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
914 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
915 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
917 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
918 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
920 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
921 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
923 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
925 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
926 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
927 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
929 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
930 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
932 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
933 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
934 used to factor large numbers.
936 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
939 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
941 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
943 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
944 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
946 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
947 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
948 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
949 maximum command-line (argv) length.
951 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
952 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
953 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
955 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
956 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
960 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
962 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
963 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
965 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
966 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
968 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
970 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
971 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
975 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
976 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
977 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
979 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
981 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
982 no matter how many files are in a given directory
984 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
985 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
986 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
988 ** Changes in behavior
990 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
991 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
994 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
998 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
1000 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
1001 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
1002 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
1004 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
1005 with no USERNAME argument.
1007 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
1008 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
1009 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
1011 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
1012 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
1013 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
1014 number of fields for some inputs.
1016 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
1017 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1019 ** Changes in behavior
1021 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1022 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1025 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1029 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1031 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1032 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1033 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1034 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1036 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1037 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1039 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1040 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1042 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1043 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1045 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1046 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1047 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1048 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1050 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1051 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1052 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1053 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1054 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1055 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1057 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1058 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1060 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1061 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1062 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1064 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1065 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1067 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1068 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1070 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1071 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1072 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1073 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1075 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1076 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1078 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1079 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1081 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1082 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1083 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1087 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1088 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1090 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1091 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1092 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1093 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1097 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1098 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1100 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1102 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1106 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1107 which have negative errno values.
1111 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1115 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1119 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1120 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1123 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1127 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1128 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1129 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1131 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1132 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1133 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1134 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1138 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1139 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1140 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1141 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1144 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1148 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1150 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1151 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1152 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1155 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1159 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1160 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1162 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1164 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1166 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1168 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1172 ** Changes in behavior
1174 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1175 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1177 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1178 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1180 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1181 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1182 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1186 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1187 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1188 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1189 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1190 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1191 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1192 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1193 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1194 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1195 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1196 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1198 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1199 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1200 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1203 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1206 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1207 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1208 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1210 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1211 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1212 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1215 ** New build options
1217 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1218 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1219 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1220 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1222 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1223 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1224 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1225 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1226 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1227 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1228 of "make check" fail.
1230 ** Remove deprecated options
1232 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1233 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1234 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1235 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1236 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1238 ** Improved robustness
1240 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1241 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1242 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1243 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1244 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1245 loss of the contents of a/f.
1247 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1248 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1252 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1253 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1254 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1256 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1257 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1258 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1259 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1261 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1262 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1263 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1264 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1265 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1266 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1267 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1268 destination is a symlink.
1270 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1272 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1273 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1275 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1276 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1278 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1280 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1281 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1283 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1284 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1286 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1289 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1290 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1292 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1293 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1295 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1296 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1297 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1298 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1300 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1301 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1302 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1304 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1305 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1306 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1308 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1309 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1310 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1311 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1313 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1314 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1315 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1317 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1318 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1320 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1321 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1323 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1325 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1326 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1327 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1329 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1330 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1332 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1333 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1335 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1336 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1338 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1339 [present in the original version]
1342 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1346 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1348 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1349 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1350 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1352 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1353 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1355 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1359 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1360 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1362 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1363 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1365 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1366 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1368 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1369 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1370 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1371 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1372 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1373 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1375 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1376 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1379 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1380 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1382 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1385 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1386 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1387 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1389 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1390 directory is unreadable.
1392 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1393 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1394 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1396 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1397 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1398 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1399 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1400 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1403 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1404 Before it would print nothing.
1406 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1408 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1409 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1410 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1411 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1412 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1413 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1414 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1415 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1417 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1421 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1422 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1423 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1425 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1426 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1427 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1428 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1431 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1435 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1436 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1437 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1438 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1439 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1440 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1441 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1443 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1444 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1445 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1446 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1447 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1448 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1449 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1450 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1452 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1453 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1454 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1457 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1461 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1462 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1464 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1465 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1466 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1468 ** Improved robustness
1470 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1471 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1472 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1475 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1479 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1480 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1481 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1482 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1483 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1485 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1489 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1492 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1496 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1497 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1498 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1499 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1501 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1502 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1504 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1505 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1506 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1509 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1511 ** Improved robustness
1513 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1514 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1516 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1517 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1518 or NFS-mounted partition.
1520 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1521 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1525 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1526 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1527 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1528 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1529 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1530 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1532 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1533 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1535 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1536 or neglect to report file removal.
1538 For the "groups" command:
1540 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1541 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1543 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1545 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1547 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1551 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1552 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1555 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1557 ** Changes in behavior
1559 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1560 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1561 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1562 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1564 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1565 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1566 a final `./' or `../' component.
1568 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1569 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1570 this only for pipes.
1572 ** Infrastructure changes
1574 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1575 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1576 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1577 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1581 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1582 name is "." or "..".
1584 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1585 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1586 dirent.d_type support.
1588 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1589 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1591 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1592 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1593 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1594 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1597 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1599 ** Changes in behavior
1601 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1605 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1606 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1610 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1611 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1612 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1614 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1615 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1617 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1618 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1620 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1622 ** Improved robustness
1624 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1625 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1626 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1628 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1629 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1632 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1633 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1635 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1636 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1638 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1639 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1641 ** Changes in behavior
1643 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1644 where the two are distinct.
1646 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1647 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1648 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1649 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1650 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1651 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1652 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1653 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1654 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1655 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1656 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1657 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1658 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1659 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1660 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1661 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1662 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1664 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1665 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1666 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1668 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1669 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1670 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1671 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1674 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1675 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1679 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1680 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1681 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1682 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1684 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1685 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1686 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1688 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1689 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1690 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1691 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1692 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1695 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1696 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1698 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1699 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1700 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1701 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1703 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1704 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1705 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1707 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1708 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1709 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1710 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1712 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1713 and sticky) with the -m option.
1715 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1716 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1717 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1718 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1719 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1721 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1722 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1724 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1728 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1729 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1730 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1731 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1733 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1735 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1737 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1738 silently ignoring one of them.
1740 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1741 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1742 containing this change was 5.92.
1744 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1745 automatically newline terminated.
1747 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1748 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1749 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1750 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1753 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1754 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1755 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1758 ** Scheduled for removal
1760 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1761 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1763 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1764 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1765 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1766 command to unlink a directory.
1768 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1769 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1770 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1771 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1775 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1776 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1777 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1778 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1779 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1780 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1784 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1785 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1787 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1789 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1790 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1791 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1793 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1794 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1797 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1798 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1800 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1801 list directories before files.
1803 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1804 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1805 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1806 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1809 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1811 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1813 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1814 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1815 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1817 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1818 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1822 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1823 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1824 usually printing nothing.
1826 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1828 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1829 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1830 them with hard-linked directories.
1832 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1833 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1834 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1836 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1837 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1838 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1840 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1843 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1844 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1846 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1847 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1849 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1850 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1852 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1853 all command-line arguments.
1855 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1857 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1859 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1860 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1862 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1864 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1865 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1866 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1867 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1868 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1870 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1871 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1873 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1874 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1875 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1876 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1878 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1880 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1884 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1885 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1887 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1888 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1890 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1891 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1893 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1894 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1896 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1897 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1899 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1901 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1902 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1903 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1906 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1908 ** Build-related bug fixes
1910 installing .mo files would fail
1913 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1917 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1919 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1922 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1926 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1927 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1931 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1933 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1934 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1936 ** Deprecated options
1938 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1939 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1941 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1945 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1947 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1948 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1949 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1950 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1952 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1955 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1961 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1966 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1968 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1970 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1971 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1972 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1974 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1975 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1976 problematic usages. These include:
1978 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1979 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1980 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1981 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1982 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1983 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1984 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1985 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1986 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1988 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1989 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1991 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1992 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1993 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1994 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1996 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1997 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1998 between binary and text files.
2000 The following programs now always use text input/output:
2004 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
2008 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
2009 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
2011 head tac tail tee tr
2012 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
2014 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
2015 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
2017 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2018 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2019 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2021 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2023 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2025 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2026 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2027 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2031 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2033 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2034 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2036 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2037 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2038 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2042 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2043 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2047 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2048 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2049 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2053 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2054 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2058 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2060 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2062 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2066 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2067 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2068 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2070 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2071 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2072 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2073 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2074 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2076 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2080 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2081 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2082 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2084 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2086 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2087 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2088 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2089 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2091 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2093 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2094 rather than silently wrapping around.
2096 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2097 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2099 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2100 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2102 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2103 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2104 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2105 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2107 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2109 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2111 ** Improved robustness
2113 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2114 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2115 no matter how large the result.
2117 ** Improved portability
2119 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2120 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2122 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2124 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2125 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2126 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2128 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2129 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2133 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2134 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2136 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2138 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2139 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2140 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2141 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2143 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2144 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2146 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2147 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2148 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2150 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2152 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2153 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2155 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2156 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2158 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2160 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2161 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2163 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2164 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2166 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2167 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2168 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2170 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2172 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2174 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2178 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2180 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2181 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2182 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2184 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2185 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2187 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2188 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2189 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2191 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2192 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2194 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2195 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2196 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2197 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2199 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2200 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2202 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2203 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2204 the file system does not support it.
2206 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2208 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2209 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2211 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2213 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2214 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2216 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2217 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2218 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2219 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2221 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2222 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2225 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2226 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2227 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2228 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2230 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2231 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2232 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2233 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2235 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2236 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2238 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2240 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2241 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2242 reporting incorrect results.
2246 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2247 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2249 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2252 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2254 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2255 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2257 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2258 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2260 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2263 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2264 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2265 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2266 the file name does not look like a page range.
2268 printf has several changes:
2270 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2271 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2273 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2274 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2275 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2277 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2278 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2281 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2282 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2284 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2285 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2287 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2289 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2290 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2292 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2294 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2296 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2297 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2298 when first encountering the directory.
2302 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2303 output; POSIX requires this.
2305 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2306 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2308 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2310 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2311 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2313 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2314 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2316 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2317 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2318 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2319 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2320 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2321 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2322 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2324 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2325 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2326 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2328 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2329 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2331 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2333 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2335 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2336 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2337 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2338 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2340 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2344 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2345 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2346 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2347 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2348 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2350 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2351 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2352 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2354 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2355 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2357 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2358 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2360 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2361 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2362 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2363 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2364 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2366 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2367 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2369 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2370 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2372 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2374 nocreat do not create the output file
2375 excl fail if the output file already exists
2376 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2377 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2379 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2381 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2382 direct use direct I/O for data
2383 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2384 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2385 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2386 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2387 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2389 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2391 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2392 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2395 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2396 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2397 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2398 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2399 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2400 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2402 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2403 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2405 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2408 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2410 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2412 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2413 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2415 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2416 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2417 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2419 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2420 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2421 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2423 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2425 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2426 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2428 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2429 for compatibility with bash.
2431 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2433 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2434 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2435 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2436 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2438 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2439 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2441 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2442 ls supports TABSIZE.
2443 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2444 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2445 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2447 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2450 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2452 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2453 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2454 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2455 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2456 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2457 an offset, not as a file name.
2459 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2460 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2462 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2463 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2465 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2466 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2468 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2469 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2470 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2472 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2473 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2475 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2476 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2480 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2482 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2484 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2488 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2489 or more arguments between partitions.
2491 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2492 holes in the destination.
2494 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2495 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2496 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2497 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2498 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2499 terminates immediately.
2501 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2503 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2505 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2506 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2507 not the empty string.
2509 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2510 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2514 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2515 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2516 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2519 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2526 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2530 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2531 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2533 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2534 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2536 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2537 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2538 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2541 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2545 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2546 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2548 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2549 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2551 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2552 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2553 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2555 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2557 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2560 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2562 ** Configuration option
2564 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2565 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2569 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2570 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2574 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2575 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2576 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2579 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2580 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2581 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2582 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2583 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2584 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2585 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2588 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2592 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2593 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2594 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2596 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2597 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2599 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2601 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2602 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2603 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2604 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2606 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2608 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2609 not just the ones that reference directories
2611 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2612 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2614 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2615 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2616 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2618 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2619 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2620 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2621 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2622 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2623 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2625 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2630 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2631 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2633 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2635 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2637 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2639 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2640 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2642 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2643 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2645 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2647 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2651 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2653 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2655 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2656 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2657 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2658 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2659 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2661 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2662 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2664 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2665 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2667 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2668 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2670 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2671 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2672 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2676 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2677 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2678 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2679 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2680 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2681 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2682 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2683 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2684 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2685 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2686 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2687 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2688 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2689 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2691 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2693 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2694 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2696 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2698 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2700 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2701 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2703 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2705 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2706 without a trailing newline.
2708 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2709 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2711 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2714 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2718 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2720 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2722 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2723 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2724 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2725 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2727 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2729 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2730 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2731 be printed without leading spaces.
2733 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2734 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2739 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2740 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2741 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2743 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2745 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2746 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2748 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2749 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2751 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2752 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2754 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2756 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2758 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2760 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2761 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2763 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2765 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2767 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2768 byte offsets are specified.
2771 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2774 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2777 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2778 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2779 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2780 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2781 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2782 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2783 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2784 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2785 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2786 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2787 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2788 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2789 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2790 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2791 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2792 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2793 directory where M has write access.
2794 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2795 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2796 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2799 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2800 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2801 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2802 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2803 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2804 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2805 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2806 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2807 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2808 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2809 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2810 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2811 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2812 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2813 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2814 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2815 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2816 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2817 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2818 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2819 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2820 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2821 appeared one additional time.
2823 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2824 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2825 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2826 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2829 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2830 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2831 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2832 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2833 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2834 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2835 if there were more than 338.
2837 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2838 - false --help now exits nonzero
2841 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2842 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2843 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2844 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2847 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2848 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2849 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2850 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2851 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2854 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2855 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2856 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2857 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2858 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2859 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2860 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2863 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2864 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2865 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2866 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2867 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2868 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2870 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2871 under certain unusual conditions
2872 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2873 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2876 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2877 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2878 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2879 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2880 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2881 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2882 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2883 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2884 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2885 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2886 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2887 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2888 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2889 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2890 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2891 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2894 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2895 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2898 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2899 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2900 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2901 involving hard-linked directories
2902 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2903 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2904 character-special and block files
2907 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2908 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2909 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2910 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2911 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2912 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2913 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2914 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2915 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2917 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2918 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2919 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2920 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2921 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2922 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2923 specified on the command line.
2924 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2925 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2926 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2927 the first file untouched.
2928 * readlink: new program
2929 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2930 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2931 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2932 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2933 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2934 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2937 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2938 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2939 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2940 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2941 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2942 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2943 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2944 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2945 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2946 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2947 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2948 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2950 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2951 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2952 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2954 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2955 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2956 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2957 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2958 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2959 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2960 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2961 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2964 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2965 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2968 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2969 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2970 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2971 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2972 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2973 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2974 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2977 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2978 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2980 ========================================================================
2981 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2982 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2985 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2987 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2988 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2989 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2990 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2991 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2992 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2993 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2994 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2995 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2996 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2997 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2998 The old options will continue to work for a while.
3000 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
3001 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
3002 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
3003 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
3005 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
3008 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
3010 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
3011 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
3012 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
3013 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
3014 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
3015 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
3016 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3019 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3020 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3021 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3022 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3023 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
3024 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3025 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
3026 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3027 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3028 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3029 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
3030 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
3031 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3032 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3033 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3034 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3036 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3037 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3039 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3040 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3041 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3042 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3043 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3044 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3046 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3047 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3048 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3049 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3050 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3051 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3052 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3054 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3055 the source files in the following example:
3056 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3057 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3058 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3059 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3060 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3061 links between source files with --preserve=links
3062 * cp accepts new options:
3063 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3064 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3065 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3066 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3067 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3068 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3069 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3070 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
3071 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3073 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3074 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3075 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3076 even though it's older than dest.
3077 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3078 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3079 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3080 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3081 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3083 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3084 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3085 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3086 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3087 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3088 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3089 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3091 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3092 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3093 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3095 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3096 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3097 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3098 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3099 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3100 This is the default.
3102 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3103 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3104 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3105 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3106 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3108 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3111 ========================================================================
3112 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3113 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3116 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3117 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3119 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3120 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3121 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3122 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3123 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3125 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3126 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3127 that specifies a non-directory
3130 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3131 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3132 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3133 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3134 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3135 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3136 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3137 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3138 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3139 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3140 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3141 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3142 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3143 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3144 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3145 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3146 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3147 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3148 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3149 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3150 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3151 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3152 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3153 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3155 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3156 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3157 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3159 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3161 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3162 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3164 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3165 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3166 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3167 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3168 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3170 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3171 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3172 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3173 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3174 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3176 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3178 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3179 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3180 * still more portability fixes
3181 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3182 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3184 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3186 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3188 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3190 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3191 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3192 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3193 there is any time remaining
3194 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3196 ========================================================================
3197 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3198 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3200 This package began as the union of the following:
3201 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3203 ========================================================================
3205 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3207 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3208 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3209 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3210 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3211 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3212 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.