1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
10 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
11 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
13 ** Changes in behavior
15 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
17 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
18 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
19 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning.
21 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
22 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
23 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
25 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
26 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
27 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
30 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
34 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
35 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
37 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
39 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
40 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
42 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
43 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
44 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
45 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
47 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
48 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
49 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
53 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
54 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
56 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
57 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
58 duration after the initial signal was sent.
60 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
61 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
62 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
63 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
64 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
65 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
66 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
67 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
68 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
70 ** Changes in behavior
72 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
73 sequence when it would be a no-op.
75 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
76 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
79 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
83 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
84 of available processors, which may not have been the case
85 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
86 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
90 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
91 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
93 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
94 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
95 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
96 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
98 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
99 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
100 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
103 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
107 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
108 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
109 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
111 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
112 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
113 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
115 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
116 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
118 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
119 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
120 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
121 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
123 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
124 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
125 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
127 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
128 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
129 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
130 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
132 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
133 renamed-aside and then recreated.
134 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
136 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
137 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
138 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
139 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
141 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
142 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
143 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
145 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
146 processes will not intersperse their output.
147 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
150 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
154 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
155 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
157 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
158 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
160 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
161 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
162 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
163 the presence of the empty string argument.
164 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
166 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
167 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
168 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
169 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
171 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
172 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
174 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
175 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
176 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
178 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
179 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
180 and with a malicious user on the same system
181 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
182 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
185 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
189 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
190 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
191 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
193 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
194 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
195 offending directory and all "contents."
197 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
198 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
199 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
201 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
202 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
203 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
205 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
206 processes will not intersperse their output.
207 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
208 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
210 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
211 output the name of the file to stdout.
212 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
214 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
215 call fails with errno == EACCES.
216 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
218 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
219 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
222 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
223 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
224 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
226 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
227 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
228 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
229 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
230 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
231 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
233 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
234 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
235 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
236 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
238 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
239 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
241 ** Changes in behavior
243 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
244 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
245 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
246 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
247 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
249 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
250 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
251 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
252 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
254 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
256 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
257 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
258 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
259 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
260 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
264 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
268 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
269 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
271 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
272 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
274 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
275 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
276 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
278 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
279 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
282 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
286 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
287 when the source file doesn't have write access.
288 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
290 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
291 to accommodate leap seconds.
292 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
294 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
295 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
296 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
298 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
300 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
301 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
302 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
304 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
305 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
306 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
307 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
308 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
312 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
313 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
314 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
315 directory or a symlink to a directory.
317 ** Changes in behavior
319 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
320 environment variable is set.
322 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
323 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
324 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
328 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
329 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
330 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
331 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
333 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
334 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
335 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
336 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
340 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
341 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
342 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
344 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
345 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
346 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
347 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
348 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
349 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
352 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
353 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
356 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
360 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
361 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
362 and libraries tested at configure time.
363 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
365 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
366 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
368 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
369 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
371 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
372 printing a summary to stderr.
373 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
375 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
376 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
377 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
379 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
380 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
382 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
383 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
384 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
385 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
387 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
388 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
389 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
390 which is relatively unusual.
391 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
393 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
394 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
395 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
396 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
397 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
398 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
399 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
403 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
404 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
405 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
406 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
407 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
411 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
412 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
414 ** Changes in behavior
416 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
417 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
418 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
419 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
420 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
423 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
427 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
428 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
430 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
431 before data copying has started.
433 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
434 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
436 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
437 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
438 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
439 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
441 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
442 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
443 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
444 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
446 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
451 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
452 for its standard streams.
454 ** Changes in behavior
456 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
457 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
458 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
459 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
460 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
461 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
463 ** Deprecated options
465 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
466 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
470 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
472 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
473 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
476 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
478 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
479 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
481 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
482 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
485 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
489 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
490 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
491 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
492 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
494 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
495 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
496 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
497 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
498 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
503 make check: two tests have been corrected
507 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
508 inherited from gnulib.
511 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
515 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
516 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
517 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
518 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
520 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
521 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
523 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
525 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
526 systems without xattr support.
528 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
529 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
530 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
532 ** Changes in behavior
534 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
535 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
536 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
537 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
539 ** Improved robustness
541 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
542 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
543 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
544 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
545 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
546 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
547 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
548 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
549 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
553 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
554 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
556 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
557 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
558 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
559 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
560 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
563 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
567 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
568 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
569 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
573 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
574 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
575 data was read, or on process exit.
576 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
578 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
579 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
580 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
581 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
583 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
584 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
585 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
586 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
588 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
589 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
591 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
592 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
594 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
595 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
596 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
598 ** Changes in behavior
600 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
601 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
602 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
604 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
605 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
607 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
608 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
609 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
612 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
616 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
618 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
619 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
620 install: Never copies xattrs
622 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
623 from overwriting any existing destination file
625 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
626 mode where this feature is available.
628 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
629 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
630 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
631 do not modify the destination at all.
633 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
635 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
639 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
640 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
642 cp uses much less memory in some situations
644 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
645 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
647 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
648 processing the first file name
650 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
651 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
652 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
653 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
655 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
656 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
658 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
659 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
662 ** Changes in behavior
664 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
665 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
667 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
668 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
669 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
671 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
672 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
674 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
676 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
677 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
678 is still marked with a '+'.
681 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
685 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
686 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
690 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
691 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
692 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
693 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
694 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
695 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
697 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
698 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
700 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
701 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
703 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
705 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
706 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
707 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
709 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
710 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
712 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
713 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
714 used to factor large numbers.
716 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
719 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
721 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
723 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
724 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
726 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
727 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
728 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
729 maximum command-line (argv) length.
731 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
732 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
733 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
735 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
736 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
740 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
742 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
743 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
745 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
746 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
748 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
750 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
751 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
755 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
756 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
757 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
759 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
761 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
762 no matter how many files are in a given directory
764 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
765 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
766 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
768 ** Changes in behavior
770 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
771 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
774 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
778 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
780 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
781 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
782 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
784 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
785 with no USERNAME argument.
787 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
788 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
789 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
791 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
792 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
793 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
794 number of fields for some inputs.
796 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
797 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
799 ** Changes in behavior
801 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
802 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
805 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
809 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
811 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
812 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
813 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
814 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
816 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
817 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
819 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
820 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
822 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
823 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
825 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
826 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
827 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
828 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
830 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
831 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
832 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
833 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
834 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
835 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
837 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
838 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
840 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
841 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
842 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
844 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
845 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
847 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
848 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
850 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
851 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
852 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
853 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
855 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
856 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
858 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
859 in more cases when a directory is empty.
861 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
862 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
863 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
867 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
868 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
870 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
871 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
872 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
873 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
877 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
878 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
880 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
882 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
886 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
887 which have negative errno values.
891 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
895 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
899 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
900 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
903 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
907 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
908 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
909 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
911 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
912 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
913 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
914 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
918 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
919 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
920 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
921 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
924 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
928 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
930 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
931 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
932 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
935 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
939 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
940 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
942 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
944 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
946 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
948 ** Programs no longer installed by default
952 ** Changes in behavior
954 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
955 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
957 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
958 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
960 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
961 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
962 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
966 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
967 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
968 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
969 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
970 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
971 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
972 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
973 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
974 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
975 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
976 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
978 The following commands and options now support the standard size
979 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
980 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
983 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
986 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
987 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
988 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
990 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
991 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
992 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
997 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
998 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
999 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1000 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1002 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1003 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1004 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1005 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1006 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1007 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1008 of "make check" fail.
1010 ** Remove deprecated options
1012 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1013 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1014 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1015 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1016 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1018 ** Improved robustness
1020 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1021 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1022 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1023 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1024 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1025 loss of the contents of a/f.
1027 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1028 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1032 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1033 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1034 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1036 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1037 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1038 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1039 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1041 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1042 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1043 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1044 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1045 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1046 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1047 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1048 destination is a symlink.
1050 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1052 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1053 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1055 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1056 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1058 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1060 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1061 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1063 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1064 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1066 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1069 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1070 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1072 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1073 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1075 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1076 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1077 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1078 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1080 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1081 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1082 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1084 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1085 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1086 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1088 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1089 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1090 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1091 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1093 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1094 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1095 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1097 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1098 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1100 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1101 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1103 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1105 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1106 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1107 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1109 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1110 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1112 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1113 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1115 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1116 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1118 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1119 [present in the original version]
1122 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1126 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1128 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1129 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1130 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1132 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1133 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1135 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1139 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1140 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1142 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1143 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1145 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1146 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1148 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1149 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1150 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1151 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1152 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1153 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1155 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1156 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1159 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1160 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1162 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1165 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1166 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1167 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1169 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1170 directory is unreadable.
1172 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1173 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1174 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1176 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1177 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1178 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1179 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1180 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1183 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1184 Before it would print nothing.
1186 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1188 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1189 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1190 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1191 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1192 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1193 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1194 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1195 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1197 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1201 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1202 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1203 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1205 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1206 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1207 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1208 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1211 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1215 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1216 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1217 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1218 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1219 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1220 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1221 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1223 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1224 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1225 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1226 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1227 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1228 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1229 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1230 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1232 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1233 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1234 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1237 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1241 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1242 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1244 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1245 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1246 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1248 ** Improved robustness
1250 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1251 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1252 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1255 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1259 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1260 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1261 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1262 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1263 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1265 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1269 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1272 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1276 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1277 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1278 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1279 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1281 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1282 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1284 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1285 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1286 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1289 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1291 ** Improved robustness
1293 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1294 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1296 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1297 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1298 or NFS-mounted partition.
1300 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1301 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1305 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1306 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1307 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1308 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1309 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1310 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1312 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1313 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1315 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1316 or neglect to report file removal.
1318 For the "groups" command:
1320 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1321 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1323 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1325 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1327 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1331 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1332 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1335 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1337 ** Changes in behavior
1339 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1340 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1341 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1342 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1344 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1345 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1346 a final `./' or `../' component.
1348 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1349 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1350 this only for pipes.
1352 ** Infrastructure changes
1354 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1355 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1356 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1357 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1361 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1362 name is "." or "..".
1364 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1365 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1366 dirent.d_type support.
1368 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1369 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1371 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1372 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1373 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1374 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1377 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1379 ** Changes in behavior
1381 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1385 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1386 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1390 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1391 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1392 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1394 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1395 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1397 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1398 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1400 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1402 ** Improved robustness
1404 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1405 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1406 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1408 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1409 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1412 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1413 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1415 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1416 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1418 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1419 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1421 ** Changes in behavior
1423 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1424 where the two are distinct.
1426 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1427 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1428 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1429 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1430 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1431 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1432 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1433 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1434 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1435 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1436 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1437 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1438 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1439 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1440 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1441 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1442 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1444 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1445 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1446 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1448 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1449 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1450 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1451 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1454 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1455 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1459 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1460 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1461 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1462 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1464 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1465 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1466 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1468 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1469 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1470 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1471 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1472 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1475 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1476 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1478 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1479 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1480 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1481 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1483 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1484 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1485 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1487 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1488 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1489 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1490 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1492 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1493 and sticky) with the -m option.
1495 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1496 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1497 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1498 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1499 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1501 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1502 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1504 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1508 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1509 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1510 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1511 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1513 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1515 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1517 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1518 silently ignoring one of them.
1520 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1521 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1522 containing this change was 5.92.
1524 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1525 automatically newline terminated.
1527 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1528 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1529 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1530 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1533 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1534 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1535 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1538 ** Scheduled for removal
1540 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1541 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1543 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1544 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1545 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1546 command to unlink a directory.
1548 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1549 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1550 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1551 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1555 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1556 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1557 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1558 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1559 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1560 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1564 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1565 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1567 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1569 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1570 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1571 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1573 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1574 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1577 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1578 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1580 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1581 list directories before files.
1583 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1584 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1585 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1586 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1589 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1591 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1593 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1594 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1595 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1597 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1598 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1602 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1603 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1604 usually printing nothing.
1606 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1608 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1609 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1610 them with hard-linked directories.
1612 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1613 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1614 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1616 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1617 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1618 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1620 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1623 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1624 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1626 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1627 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1629 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1630 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1632 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1633 all command-line arguments.
1635 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1637 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1639 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1640 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1642 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1644 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1645 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1646 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1647 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1648 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1650 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1651 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1653 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1654 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1655 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1656 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1658 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1660 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1664 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1665 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1667 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1668 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1670 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1671 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1673 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1674 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1676 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1677 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1679 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1681 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1682 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1683 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1686 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1688 ** Build-related bug fixes
1690 installing .mo files would fail
1693 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1697 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1699 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1702 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1706 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1707 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1711 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1713 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1714 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1716 ** Deprecated options
1718 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1719 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1721 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1725 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1727 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1728 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1729 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1730 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1732 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1735 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1741 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1746 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1748 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1750 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1751 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1752 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1754 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1755 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1756 problematic usages. These include:
1758 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1759 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1760 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1761 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1762 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1763 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1764 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1765 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1766 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1768 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1769 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1771 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1772 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1773 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1774 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1776 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1777 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1778 between binary and text files.
1780 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1784 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1788 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1789 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1791 head tac tail tee tr
1792 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1794 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1795 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1797 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1798 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1799 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1801 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1803 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1805 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1806 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1807 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1811 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1813 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1814 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1816 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1817 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1818 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1822 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1823 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1827 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1828 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1829 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1833 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1834 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1838 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1840 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1842 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1846 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1847 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1848 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1850 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1851 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1852 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1853 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1854 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1856 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1860 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1861 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1862 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1864 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1866 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1867 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1868 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1869 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1871 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1873 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1874 rather than silently wrapping around.
1876 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1877 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1879 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1880 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1882 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1883 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1884 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1885 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1887 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1889 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1891 ** Improved robustness
1893 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1894 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1895 no matter how large the result.
1897 ** Improved portability
1899 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1900 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1902 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1904 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1905 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1906 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1908 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1909 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1913 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1914 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1916 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1918 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1919 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1920 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1921 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1923 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1924 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1926 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1927 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1928 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1930 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1932 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1933 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1935 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1936 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1938 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1940 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1941 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1943 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1944 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1946 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1947 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1948 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1950 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1952 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1954 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1958 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1960 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1961 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1962 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1964 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1965 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1967 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1968 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1969 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1971 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1972 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1974 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1975 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1976 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1977 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1979 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1980 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1982 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1983 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1984 the file system does not support it.
1986 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1988 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1989 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1991 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1993 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1994 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1996 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1997 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1998 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1999 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2001 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2002 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2005 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2006 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2007 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2008 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2010 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2011 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2012 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2013 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2015 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2016 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2018 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2020 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2021 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2022 reporting incorrect results.
2026 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2027 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2029 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2032 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2034 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2035 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2037 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2038 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2040 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2043 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2044 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2045 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2046 the file name does not look like a page range.
2048 printf has several changes:
2050 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2051 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2053 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2054 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2055 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2057 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2058 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2061 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2062 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2064 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2065 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2067 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2069 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2070 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2072 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2074 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2076 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2077 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2078 when first encountering the directory.
2082 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2083 output; POSIX requires this.
2085 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2086 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2088 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2090 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2091 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2093 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2094 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2096 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2097 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2098 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2099 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2100 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2101 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2102 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2104 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2105 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2106 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2108 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2109 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2111 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2113 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2115 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2116 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2117 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2118 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2120 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2124 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2125 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2126 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2127 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2128 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2130 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2131 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2132 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2134 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2135 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2137 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2138 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2140 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2141 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2142 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2143 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2144 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2146 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2147 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2149 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2150 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2152 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2154 nocreat do not create the output file
2155 excl fail if the output file already exists
2156 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2157 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2159 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2161 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2162 direct use direct I/O for data
2163 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2164 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2165 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2166 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2167 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2169 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2171 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2172 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2175 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2176 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2177 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2178 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2179 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2180 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2182 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2183 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2185 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2188 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2190 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2192 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2193 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2195 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2196 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2197 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2199 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2200 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2201 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2203 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2205 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2206 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2208 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2209 for compatibility with bash.
2211 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2213 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2214 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2215 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2216 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2218 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2219 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2221 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2222 ls supports TABSIZE.
2223 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2224 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2225 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2227 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2230 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2232 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2233 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2234 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2235 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2236 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2237 an offset, not as a file name.
2239 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2240 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2242 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2243 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2245 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2246 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2248 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2249 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2250 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2252 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2253 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2255 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2256 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2260 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2262 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2264 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2268 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2269 or more arguments between partitions.
2271 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2272 holes in the destination.
2274 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2275 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2276 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2277 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2278 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2279 terminates immediately.
2281 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2283 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2285 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2286 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2287 not the empty string.
2289 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2290 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2294 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2295 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2296 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2299 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2306 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2310 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2311 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2313 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2314 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2316 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2317 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2318 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2321 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2325 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2326 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2328 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2329 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2331 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2332 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2333 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2335 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2337 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2340 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2342 ** Configuration option
2344 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2345 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2349 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2350 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2354 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2355 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2356 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2359 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2360 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2361 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2362 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2363 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2364 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2365 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2368 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2372 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2373 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2374 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2376 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2377 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2379 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2381 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2382 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2383 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2384 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2386 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2388 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2389 not just the ones that reference directories
2391 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2392 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2394 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2395 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2396 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2398 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2399 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2400 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2401 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2402 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2403 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2405 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2410 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2411 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2413 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2415 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2417 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2419 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2420 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2422 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2423 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2425 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2427 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2431 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2433 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2435 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2436 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2437 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2438 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2439 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2441 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2442 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2444 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2445 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2447 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2448 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2450 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2451 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2452 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2456 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2457 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2458 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2459 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2460 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2461 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2462 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2463 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2464 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2465 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2466 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2467 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2468 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2469 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2471 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2473 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2474 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2476 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2478 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2480 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2481 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2483 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2485 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2486 without a trailing newline.
2488 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2489 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2491 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2494 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2498 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2500 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2502 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2503 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2504 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2505 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2507 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2509 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2510 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2511 be printed without leading spaces.
2513 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2514 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2519 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2520 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2521 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2523 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2525 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2526 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2528 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2529 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2531 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2532 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2534 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2536 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2538 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2540 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2541 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2543 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2545 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2547 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2548 byte offsets are specified.
2551 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2554 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2557 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2558 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2559 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2560 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2561 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2562 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2563 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2564 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2565 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2566 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2567 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2568 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2569 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2570 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2571 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2572 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2573 directory where M has write access.
2574 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2575 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2576 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2579 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2580 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2581 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2582 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2583 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2584 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2585 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2586 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2587 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2588 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2589 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2590 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2591 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2592 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2593 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2594 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2595 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2596 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2597 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2598 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2599 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2600 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2601 appeared one additional time.
2603 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2604 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2605 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2606 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2609 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2610 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2611 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2612 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2613 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2614 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2615 if there were more than 338.
2617 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2618 - false --help now exits nonzero
2621 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2622 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2623 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2624 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2627 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2628 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2629 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2630 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2631 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2634 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2635 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2636 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2637 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2638 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2639 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2640 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2643 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2644 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2645 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2646 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2647 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2648 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2650 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2651 under certain unusual conditions
2652 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2653 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2656 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2657 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2658 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2659 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2660 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2661 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2662 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2663 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2664 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2665 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2666 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2667 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2668 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2669 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2670 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2671 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2674 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2675 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2678 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2679 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2680 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2681 involving hard-linked directories
2682 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2683 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2684 character-special and block files
2687 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2688 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2689 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2690 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2691 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2692 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2693 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2694 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2695 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2697 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2698 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2699 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2700 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2701 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2702 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2703 specified on the command line.
2704 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2705 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2706 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2707 the first file untouched.
2708 * readlink: new program
2709 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2710 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2711 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2712 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2713 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2714 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2717 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2718 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2719 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2720 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2721 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2722 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2723 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2724 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2725 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2726 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2727 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2728 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2730 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2731 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2732 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2734 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2735 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2736 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2737 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2738 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2739 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2740 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2741 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2744 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2745 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2748 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2749 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2750 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2751 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2752 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2753 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2754 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2757 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2758 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2760 ========================================================================
2761 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2762 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2765 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2767 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2768 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2769 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2770 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2771 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2772 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2773 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2774 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2775 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2776 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2777 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2778 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2780 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2781 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2782 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2783 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2785 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2788 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2790 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2791 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2792 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2793 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2794 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2795 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2796 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2799 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2800 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2801 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2802 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2803 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2804 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2805 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2806 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2807 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2808 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2809 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2810 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2811 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2812 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2813 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2814 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2816 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2817 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2819 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2820 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2821 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2822 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2823 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2824 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2826 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2827 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2828 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2829 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2830 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2831 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2832 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2834 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2835 the source files in the following example:
2836 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2837 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2838 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2839 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2840 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2841 links between source files with --preserve=links
2842 * cp accepts new options:
2843 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2844 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2845 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2846 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2847 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2848 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2849 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2850 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2851 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2853 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2854 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2855 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2856 even though it's older than dest.
2857 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2858 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2859 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2860 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2861 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2863 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2864 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2865 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2866 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2867 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2868 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2869 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2871 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2872 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2873 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2875 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2876 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2877 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2878 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2879 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2880 This is the default.
2882 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2883 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2884 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2885 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2886 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2888 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2891 ========================================================================
2892 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2893 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2896 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2897 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2899 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2900 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2901 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2902 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2903 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2905 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2906 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2907 that specifies a non-directory
2910 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2911 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2912 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2913 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2914 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2915 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2916 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2917 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2918 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2919 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2920 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2921 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2922 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2923 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2924 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2925 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2926 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2927 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2928 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2929 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2930 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2931 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2932 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2933 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2935 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2936 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2937 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2939 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2941 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2942 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2944 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2945 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2946 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2947 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2948 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2950 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2951 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2952 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2953 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2954 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2956 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2958 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2959 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2960 * still more portability fixes
2961 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2962 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2964 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2966 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2968 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2970 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2971 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2972 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2973 there is any time remaining
2974 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2976 ========================================================================
2977 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2978 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2980 This package began as the union of the following:
2981 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2983 ========================================================================
2985 Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2987 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2988 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
2989 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2990 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2991 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2992 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.