1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 ls's -k option no longer affects how ls -l outputs file sizes.
8 It now affects only the per-directory block counts written by -l,
9 and the sizes written by -s. This is for compatibility with BSD
10 and with POSIX 2008. Because -k is no longer equivalent to
11 --block-size=1KiB, a new long option --kibibyte stands for -k.
12 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.4]
14 ls -l would leak a little memory (security context string) for each
15 nonempty directory listed on the command line, when using SELinux.
16 [bug probably introduced in coreutils-6.10 with SELinux support]
18 rm -rf DIR would fail with "Device or resource busy" on Cygwin with NWFS
19 and NcFsd file systems. This did not affect Unix/Linux-based kernels.
20 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0, when rm began using fts]
22 tac no longer fails to handle two or more non-seekable inputs
23 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
25 tail -f no longer tries to use inotify on GPFS file systems
26 [you might say this was introduced in coreutils-7.5, along with inotify
27 support, but the GPFS magic number wasn't in the usual places then.]
30 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.14 (2011-10-12) [stable]
34 ls --dereference no longer outputs erroneous "argetm" strings for
35 dangling symlinks when an 'ln=target' entry is in $LS_COLORS.
36 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
38 ls -lL symlink once again properly prints "+" when the referent has an ACL.
39 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.13]
41 sort -g no longer infloops for certain inputs containing NaNs
42 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
46 md5sum --check now supports the -r format from the corresponding BSD tool.
47 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
49 pwd now works also on systems without openat. On such systems, pwd
50 would fail when run from a directory whose absolute name contained
51 more than PATH_MAX / 3 components. The df, stat and readlink programs
52 are also affected due to their use of the canonicalize_* functions.
54 ** Changes in behavior
56 timeout now only processes the first signal received from the set
57 it is handling (SIGTERM, SIGINT, ...). This is to support systems that
58 implicitly create threads for some timer functions (like GNU/kFreeBSD).
62 "make dist" no longer builds .tar.gz files.
63 xz is portable enough and in wide-enough use that distributing
64 only .tar.xz files is enough.
67 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.13 (2011-09-08) [stable]
71 chown and chgrp with the -v --from= options, now output the correct owner.
72 I.E. for skipped files, the original ownership is output, not the new one.
73 [bug introduced in sh-utils-2.0g]
75 cp -r could mistakenly change the permissions of an existing destination
76 directory. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.8]
78 cp -u -p would fail to preserve one hard link for each up-to-date copy
79 of a src-hard-linked name in the destination tree. I.e., if s/a and s/b
80 are hard-linked and dst/s/a is up to date, "cp -up s dst" would copy s/b
81 to dst/s/b rather than simply linking dst/s/b to dst/s/a.
82 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
84 fts-using tools (rm, du, chmod, chgrp, chown, chcon) no longer use memory
85 proportional to the number of entries in each directory they process.
86 Before, rm -rf 4-million-entry-directory would consume about 1GiB of memory.
87 Now, it uses less than 30MB, no matter how many entries there are.
88 [this bug was inherent in the use of fts: thus, for rm the bug was
89 introduced in coreutils-8.0. The prior implementation of rm did not use
90 as much memory. du, chmod, chgrp and chown started using fts in 6.0.
91 chcon was added in coreutils-6.9.91 with fts support. ]
93 pr -T no longer ignores a specified LAST_PAGE to stop at.
94 [bug introduced in textutils-1.19q]
96 printf '%d' '"' no longer accesses out-of-bounds memory in the diagnostic.
97 [bug introduced in sh-utils-1.16]
99 split --number l/... no longer creates extraneous files in certain cases.
100 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
102 timeout now sends signals to commands that create their own process group.
103 timeout is no longer confused when starting off with a child process.
104 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.0]
106 unexpand -a now aligns correctly when there are spaces spanning a tabstop,
107 followed by a tab. In that case a space was dropped, causing misalignment.
108 We also now ensure that a space never precedes a tab.
109 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
111 ** Changes in behavior
113 chmod, chown and chgrp now output the original attributes in messages,
114 when -v or -c specified.
116 cp -au (where --preserve=links is implicit) may now replace newer
117 files in the destination, to mirror hard links from the source.
121 date now accepts ISO 8601 date-time strings with "T" as the
122 separator. It has long parsed dates like "2004-02-29 16:21:42"
123 with a space between the date and time strings. Now it also parses
124 "2004-02-29T16:21:42" and fractional-second and time-zone-annotated
125 variants like "2004-02-29T16:21:42.333-07:00"
127 md5sum accepts the new --strict option. With --check, it makes the
128 tool exit non-zero for any invalid input line, rather than just warning.
129 This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
131 split accepts a new --filter=CMD option. With it, split filters output
132 through CMD. CMD may use the $FILE environment variable, which is set to
133 the nominal output file name for each invocation of CMD. For example, to
134 split a file into 3 approximately equal parts, which are then compressed:
135 split -n3 --filter='xz > $FILE.xz' big
136 Note the use of single quotes, not double quotes.
137 That creates files named xaa.xz, xab.xz and xac.xz.
139 timeout accepts a new --foreground option, to support commands not started
140 directly from a shell prompt, where the command is interactive or needs to
141 receive signals initiated from the terminal.
145 cp -p now copies trivial NSFv4 ACLs on Solaris 10. Before, it would
146 mistakenly apply a non-trivial ACL to the destination file.
148 cp and ls now support HP-UX 11.11's ACLs, thanks to improved support
151 df now supports disk partitions larger than 4 TiB on MacOS X 10.5
152 or newer and on AIX 5.2 or newer.
154 join --check-order now prints "join: FILE:LINE_NUMBER: bad_line" for an
155 unsorted input, rather than e.g., "join: file 1 is not in sorted order".
157 shuf outputs small subsets of large permutations much more efficiently.
158 For example `shuf -i1-$((2**32-1)) -n2` no longer exhausts memory.
160 stat -f now recognizes the GPFS, MQUEUE and PSTOREFS file system types.
162 timeout now supports sub-second timeouts.
166 Changes inherited from gnulib address a build failure on HP-UX 11.11
167 when using /opt/ansic/bin/cc.
169 Numerous portability and build improvements inherited via gnulib.
172 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.12 (2011-04-26) [stable]
176 tail's --follow=name option no longer implies --retry on systems
177 with inotify support. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
179 ** Changes in behavior
181 cp's extent-based (FIEMAP) copying code is more reliable in the face
182 of varying and undocumented file system semantics:
183 - it no longer treats unwritten extents specially
184 - a FIEMAP-based extent copy always uses the FIEMAP_FLAG_SYNC flag.
185 Before, it would incur the performance penalty of that sync only
186 for 2.6.38 and older kernels. We thought all problems would be
188 - it now attempts a FIEMAP copy only on a file that appears sparse.
189 Sparse files are relatively unusual, and the copying code incurs
190 the performance penalty of the now-mandatory sync only for them.
194 dd once again compiles on AIX 5.1 and 5.2
197 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.11 (2011-04-13) [stable]
201 cp -a --link would not create a hardlink to a symlink, instead
202 copying the symlink and then not preserving its timestamp.
203 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
205 cp now avoids FIEMAP issues with BTRFS before Linux 2.6.38,
206 which could result in corrupt copies of sparse files.
207 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10]
209 cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output
210 delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-".
211 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
213 du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR
214 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
216 sort no longer spawns 7 worker threads to sort 16 lines
217 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
219 touch built on Solaris 9 would segfault when run on Solaris 10
220 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
222 wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error
223 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
227 dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options,
228 which will discard any cache associated with the files, or
229 processed portion thereof.
231 dd now warns that 'iflag=fullblock' should be used,
232 in various cases where partial reads can cause issues.
234 ** Changes in behavior
236 cp now avoids syncing files when possible, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
237 The sync is only needed on Linux kernels before 2.6.39.
238 [The sync was introduced in coreutils-8.10]
240 cp now copies empty extents efficiently, when doing a FIEMAP copy.
241 It no longer reads the zero bytes from the input, and also can efficiently
242 create a hole in the output file when --sparse=always is specified.
244 df now aligns columns consistently, and no longer wraps entries
245 with longer device identifiers, over two lines.
247 install now rejects its long-deprecated --preserve_context option.
248 Use --preserve-context instead.
250 test now accepts "==" as a synonym for "="
253 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable]
257 du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met:
258 part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the
259 directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory
260 argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree.
261 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
263 join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line
264 even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5]
266 rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that
267 reject file names invalid for that file system.
269 uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line.
270 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
274 cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP
275 support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes
276 when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the
277 non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the
278 output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now,
279 it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can
280 reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits
281 when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems.
283 join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the
284 output format from the first line in each file, to ensure
285 the same number of fields are output for each line.
287 ** Changes in behavior
289 join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty.
290 This allows one to use join as a field extractor like:
291 join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null
294 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable]
298 split no longer creates files with a suffix length that
299 is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file.
300 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8]
303 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable]
307 cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source
308 has finer-grained time stamps than the destination.
310 od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and
311 it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases.
313 sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a
314 corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
316 sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop
317 (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to
318 do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power.
319 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
321 sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers
322 into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6]
324 sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses,
325 no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses,
326 and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses.
328 sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited.
330 ** Changes in behavior
332 sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing
333 performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted
334 to the number of available processors.
338 split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files.
341 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable]
345 cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times
346 on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a
347 latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent
348 bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97]
350 csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files,
351 nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed
352 [the bugs were present in the initial implementation]
354 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable
355 remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
357 ** Changes in behavior
359 cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink.
360 Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted.
362 stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer
363 part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from
364 coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive.
365 To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X;
366 if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X.
367 Likewise for %Y and %Z.
369 stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds.
370 However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work
371 the same way as the others.
374 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable]
378 du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose
379 link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by
380 following symlinks or via multiple arguments.
382 du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of
383 symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks.
385 du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is
386 found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a
387 "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail.
389 split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting.
390 [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8]
392 tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB.
393 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3]
395 tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory,
396 and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources.
397 [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5]
399 tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes.
400 In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort,
401 while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed.
402 [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92]
406 cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data,
407 which is useful for efficiently modifying files.
409 du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility
412 sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the
413 line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options.
415 sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination.
417 stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point
418 for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for
419 outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available.
421 ** Changes in behavior
423 df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file,
424 rather than its aliased target.
426 du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees
427 with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when
428 operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change.
430 ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than
431 the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has
432 not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some
433 locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage
434 of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured
435 locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles.
436 [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed
437 for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1]
439 rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored.
441 sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision.
443 sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and
444 no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all
447 sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize
448 the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be
449 limited with the --parallel option or with external process
450 control like taskset for example.
452 stat now provides translated output when no format is specified.
454 stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was
455 merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years
456 ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the
457 SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive,
458 and the default output when no format is specified now automatically
459 includes %C when context information is available.
461 stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system
462 option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute
463 rather than a file system attribute.
465 stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime,
466 mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and
467 %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that
468 %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant.
470 touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r)
471 instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has
472 elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1.
474 truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file.
475 Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and
476 relative sizes are restricted to supported file types.
479 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable]
483 cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes.
484 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4]
486 cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership.
488 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
489 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
491 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
492 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
493 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
494 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
496 sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly.
497 Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort.
498 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
502 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
503 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
505 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
506 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
507 duration after the initial signal was sent.
509 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
510 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
511 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
512 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
513 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
514 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
515 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
516 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
517 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
519 ** Changes in behavior
521 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
522 sequence when it would be a no-op.
524 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
525 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
528 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
532 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
533 of available processors, which may not have been the case
534 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
535 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
539 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
540 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
542 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
543 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
544 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
545 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
547 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
548 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
549 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
552 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
556 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
557 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
558 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
560 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
561 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
562 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
564 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
565 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
567 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
568 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
569 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
570 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
572 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
573 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
574 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
576 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
577 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
578 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
579 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
581 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
582 renamed-aside and then recreated.
583 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
585 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
586 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
587 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
588 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
590 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
591 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
592 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
594 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
595 processes will not intersperse their output.
596 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
599 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
603 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
604 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
606 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
607 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
609 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
610 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
611 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
612 the presence of the empty string argument.
613 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
615 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
616 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
617 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
618 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
620 tail without -f no longer accesses uninitialized memory
621 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
623 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
624 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
625 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
627 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
628 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
629 and with a malicious user on the same system
630 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
631 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
634 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
638 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
639 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
640 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
642 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
643 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
644 offending directory and all "contents."
646 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
647 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
648 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
650 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
651 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
652 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
654 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
655 processes will not intersperse their output.
656 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
657 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
659 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
660 output the name of the file to stdout.
661 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
663 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
664 call fails with errno == EACCES.
665 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
667 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
668 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
671 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
672 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
673 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
675 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
676 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
677 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
678 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
679 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
680 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
682 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
683 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
684 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
685 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
687 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
688 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
690 ** Changes in behavior
692 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
693 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
694 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
695 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
696 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
698 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
699 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
700 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
701 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
703 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
705 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
706 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
707 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
708 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
709 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
713 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
717 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
718 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
720 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
721 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
723 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
724 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
725 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
727 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
728 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
731 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
735 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
736 when the source file doesn't have write access.
737 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
739 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
740 to accommodate leap seconds.
741 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
743 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
744 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
745 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
747 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
749 "ls -is" is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
750 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
751 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
753 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
754 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
755 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
756 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
757 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
761 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
762 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
763 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
764 directory or a symlink to a directory.
766 ** Changes in behavior
768 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
769 environment variable is set.
771 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
772 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
773 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
777 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
778 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
779 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
780 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
782 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
783 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
784 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
785 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
789 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
790 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
791 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
793 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
794 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
795 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
796 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
797 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
798 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
801 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
802 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
805 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
809 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
810 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
811 and libraries tested at configure time.
812 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
814 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
815 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
817 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
818 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
820 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
821 printing a summary to stderr.
822 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
824 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
825 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
826 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
828 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
829 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
831 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
832 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
833 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
834 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
836 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
837 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
838 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
839 which is relatively unusual.
840 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
842 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
843 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
844 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
845 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
846 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
847 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
848 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
852 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
853 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
854 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
855 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
856 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
860 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
861 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
863 ** Changes in behavior
865 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
866 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
867 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
868 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
869 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
872 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
876 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
877 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
879 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
880 before data copying has started.
882 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
883 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
885 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
886 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
887 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
888 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
890 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
891 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
892 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
893 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
895 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
900 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
901 for its standard streams.
903 ** Changes in behavior
905 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
906 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
907 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
908 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
909 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
910 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
912 ** Deprecated options
914 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
915 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
919 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
921 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
922 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
925 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
927 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
928 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
930 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
931 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
934 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
938 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
939 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
940 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
941 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
943 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
944 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
945 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
946 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
947 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
952 make check: two tests have been corrected
956 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
957 inherited from gnulib.
960 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
964 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
965 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
966 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
967 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
969 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
970 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
972 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
974 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
975 systems without xattr support.
977 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
978 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
979 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
981 ** Changes in behavior
983 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
984 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
985 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
986 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
988 ** Improved robustness
990 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
991 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
992 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
993 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
994 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
995 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
996 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
997 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
998 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1002 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
1003 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
1005 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
1006 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
1007 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
1008 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1009 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1012 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
1016 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
1017 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
1018 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
1022 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
1023 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
1024 data was read, or on process exit.
1025 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1027 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
1028 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
1029 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
1030 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
1032 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
1033 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
1034 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
1035 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
1037 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
1038 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
1040 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
1041 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1043 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
1044 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
1045 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
1047 ** Changes in behavior
1049 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
1050 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
1051 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
1053 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
1054 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
1056 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
1057 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
1058 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
1061 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
1065 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
1067 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
1068 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
1069 install: Never copies xattrs
1071 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
1072 from overwriting any existing destination file
1074 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
1075 mode where this feature is available.
1077 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
1078 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
1079 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
1080 do not modify the destination at all.
1082 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
1084 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
1088 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
1089 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
1091 cp uses much less memory in some situations
1093 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
1094 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
1096 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
1097 processing the first file name
1099 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
1100 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
1101 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
1102 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
1104 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
1105 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
1107 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
1108 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
1111 ** Changes in behavior
1113 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
1114 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
1116 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
1117 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
1118 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
1120 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
1121 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
1123 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
1125 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
1126 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
1127 is still marked with a '+'.
1130 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
1134 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
1135 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
1139 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
1140 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
1141 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
1142 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
1143 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
1144 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
1146 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1147 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1149 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
1150 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
1152 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
1154 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
1155 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
1156 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
1158 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
1159 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
1161 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
1162 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
1163 used to factor large numbers.
1165 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
1168 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
1170 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
1172 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
1173 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
1175 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
1176 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
1177 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
1178 maximum command-line (argv) length.
1180 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
1181 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
1182 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
1184 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
1185 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
1189 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
1191 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
1192 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
1194 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
1195 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
1197 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
1199 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
1200 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
1204 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
1205 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
1206 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
1208 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
1210 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
1211 no matter how many files are in a given directory. I.e., to list a directory
1212 with very many files, ls -1U is much more efficient.
1214 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
1215 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
1216 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
1218 ** Changes in behavior
1220 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
1221 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
1224 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
1228 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve nanosecond resolution on
1229 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimensat' and
1230 'futimens' system calls.
1234 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
1236 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
1237 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
1238 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
1240 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
1241 with no USERNAME argument.
1243 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
1244 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
1245 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
1247 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
1248 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
1249 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
1250 number of fields for some inputs.
1252 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
1253 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
1255 ** Changes in behavior
1257 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
1258 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
1261 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
1265 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
1267 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
1268 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
1269 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
1270 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
1272 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
1273 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
1275 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
1276 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
1278 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
1279 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
1281 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
1282 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
1283 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1284 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1286 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
1287 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
1288 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
1289 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
1290 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
1291 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
1293 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
1294 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
1296 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
1297 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
1298 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
1300 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
1301 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1303 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
1304 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
1306 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
1307 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
1308 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
1309 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
1311 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
1312 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
1314 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
1315 in more cases when a directory is empty.
1317 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
1318 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
1319 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1323 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
1324 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
1326 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
1327 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
1328 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
1329 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
1333 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
1334 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
1336 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
1338 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
1342 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
1343 which have negative errno values.
1347 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
1351 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
1355 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
1356 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
1359 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
1363 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
1364 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
1365 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1367 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
1368 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
1369 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
1370 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
1374 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
1375 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
1376 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
1377 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
1380 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
1384 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
1386 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
1387 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
1388 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
1391 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
1395 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
1396 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
1398 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
1400 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
1402 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
1404 ** Programs no longer installed by default
1408 ** Changes in behavior
1410 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
1411 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
1413 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
1414 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
1416 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
1417 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
1418 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
1422 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
1423 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
1424 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
1425 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
1426 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
1427 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
1428 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
1429 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
1430 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
1431 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
1432 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
1434 The following commands and options now support the standard size
1435 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
1436 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
1439 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
1442 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
1443 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
1444 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
1446 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
1447 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
1448 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
1451 ** New build options
1453 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
1454 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
1455 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
1456 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
1458 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
1459 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
1460 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
1461 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
1462 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
1463 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
1464 of "make check" fail.
1466 ** Remove deprecated options
1468 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1469 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
1470 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
1471 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
1472 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
1474 ** Improved robustness
1476 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
1477 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
1478 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
1479 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
1480 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
1481 loss of the contents of a/f.
1483 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
1484 in its 35-colon command-line argument
1488 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
1489 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
1490 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1492 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1493 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1494 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1495 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1497 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1498 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1499 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1500 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1501 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1502 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1503 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1504 destination is a symlink.
1506 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1508 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1509 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1511 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1512 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1514 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1516 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1517 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1519 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1520 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1522 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1525 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1526 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1528 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1529 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1531 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1532 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1533 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1534 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1536 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1537 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1538 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1540 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1541 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1542 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1544 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1545 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1546 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1547 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1549 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1550 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1551 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1553 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1554 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1556 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1557 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1559 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1561 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1562 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1563 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1565 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1566 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1568 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1569 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1571 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1572 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1574 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1575 [present in the original version]
1578 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1582 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1584 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1585 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1586 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1588 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1589 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1591 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1595 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1596 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1598 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1599 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1601 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1602 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1604 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1605 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1606 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1607 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1608 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1609 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1611 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1612 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1615 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1616 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1618 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1621 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1622 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1623 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1625 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1626 directory is unreadable.
1628 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1629 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1630 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1632 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1633 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1634 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1635 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1636 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1639 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1640 Before it would print nothing.
1642 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1644 "rm -rf D" would emit a misleading diagnostic when failing to
1645 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1646 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1647 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1648 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1649 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1650 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1651 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1653 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1657 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1658 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1659 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1661 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1662 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1663 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1664 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1667 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1671 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1672 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1673 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1674 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1675 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1676 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1677 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1679 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1680 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1681 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1682 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1683 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1684 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1685 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1686 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1688 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1689 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1690 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1693 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1697 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1698 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1700 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1701 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1702 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1704 ** Improved robustness
1706 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1707 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1708 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1711 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1715 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1716 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1717 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1718 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1719 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1721 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1725 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1728 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1732 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1733 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1734 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1735 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1737 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1738 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1740 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1741 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1742 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1745 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1747 ** Improved robustness
1749 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1750 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1752 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1753 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1754 or NFS-mounted partition.
1756 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1757 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1761 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1762 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1763 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1764 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1765 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1766 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1768 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1769 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1771 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1772 or neglect to report file removal.
1774 For the "groups" command:
1776 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1777 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1779 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1781 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1783 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1787 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1788 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1791 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1793 ** Changes in behavior
1795 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1796 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1797 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1798 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1800 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1801 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1802 a final `./' or `../' component.
1804 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1805 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1806 this only for pipes.
1808 ** Infrastructure changes
1810 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1811 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1812 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1813 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1817 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1818 name is "." or "..".
1820 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1821 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1822 dirent.d_type support.
1824 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1825 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1827 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1828 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1829 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1830 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1833 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1835 ** Changes in behavior
1837 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1841 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1842 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1846 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1847 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1848 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1850 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1851 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1853 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1854 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1856 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1858 ** Improved robustness
1860 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1861 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1862 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1864 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1865 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1868 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1869 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1871 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1872 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1874 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1875 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1877 ** Changes in behavior
1879 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1880 where the two are distinct.
1882 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1883 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1884 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1885 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1886 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1887 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1888 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1889 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1890 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1891 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1892 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1893 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1894 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1895 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1896 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1897 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1898 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1900 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1901 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1902 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1904 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1905 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1906 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1907 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1910 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1911 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1915 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1916 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1917 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1918 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1920 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1921 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1922 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1924 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1925 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1926 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1927 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1928 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1931 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1932 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1934 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1935 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1936 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1937 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1939 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1940 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1941 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1943 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1944 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1945 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1946 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1948 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1949 and sticky) with the -m option.
1951 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1952 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1953 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1954 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1955 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1957 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1958 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1960 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1964 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1965 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1966 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1967 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1969 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1971 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1973 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1974 silently ignoring one of them.
1976 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1977 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1978 containing this change was 5.92.
1980 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1981 automatically newline terminated.
1983 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1984 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1985 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1986 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1989 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1990 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1991 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1994 ** Scheduled for removal
1996 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1997 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1999 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
2000 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
2001 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
2002 command to unlink a directory.
2004 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
2005 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
2006 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
2007 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
2011 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
2012 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
2013 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
2014 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
2015 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
2016 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
2020 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
2021 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
2023 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
2025 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
2026 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
2027 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
2029 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
2030 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
2033 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
2034 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
2036 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
2037 list directories before files.
2039 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
2040 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
2041 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
2042 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
2045 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
2047 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
2049 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
2050 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
2051 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
2053 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2054 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2058 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
2059 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
2060 usually printing nothing.
2062 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
2064 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
2065 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
2066 them with hard-linked directories.
2068 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
2069 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
2070 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
2072 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
2073 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
2074 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
2076 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
2079 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
2080 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
2082 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
2083 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
2085 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
2086 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
2088 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
2089 all command-line arguments.
2091 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
2093 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
2095 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
2096 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
2098 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
2100 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
2101 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
2102 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
2103 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
2104 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
2106 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
2107 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
2109 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
2110 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
2111 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
2112 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
2114 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
2116 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
2120 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
2121 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
2123 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
2124 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
2126 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
2127 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
2129 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
2130 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
2132 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
2133 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
2135 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
2137 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
2138 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
2139 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
2142 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
2144 ** Build-related bug fixes
2146 installing .mo files would fail
2149 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
2153 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
2155 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
2158 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
2162 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
2163 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
2167 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
2169 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
2170 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
2172 ** Deprecated options
2174 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
2175 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
2177 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
2181 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
2183 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
2184 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
2185 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
2186 conforming to older POSIX versions.
2188 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
2191 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
2197 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
2202 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
2204 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
2206 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
2207 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
2208 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
2210 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
2211 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
2212 problematic usages. These include:
2214 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
2215 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
2216 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
2217 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
2218 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
2219 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
2220 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
2221 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
2222 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
2224 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
2225 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
2227 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
2228 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
2229 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
2230 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
2232 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
2233 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
2234 between binary and text files.
2236 The following programs now always use text input/output:
2240 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
2244 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
2245 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
2247 head tac tail tee tr
2248 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
2250 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
2251 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
2253 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
2254 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
2255 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
2257 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
2259 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
2261 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
2262 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
2263 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
2267 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
2269 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
2270 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
2272 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
2273 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
2274 blocks until F contains N blocks.
2278 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
2279 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
2283 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
2284 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
2285 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
2289 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
2290 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
2294 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
2296 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
2298 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
2302 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
2303 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
2304 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
2306 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
2307 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
2308 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
2309 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
2310 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
2312 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
2316 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
2317 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
2318 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
2320 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
2322 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
2323 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
2324 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
2325 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
2327 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
2329 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
2330 rather than silently wrapping around.
2332 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
2333 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
2335 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
2336 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
2338 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
2339 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
2340 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
2341 file /tmp/a/b/file".
2343 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
2345 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
2347 ** Improved robustness
2349 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
2350 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
2351 no matter how large the result.
2353 ** Improved portability
2355 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
2356 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
2358 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
2360 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
2361 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
2362 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
2364 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
2365 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
2369 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
2370 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
2372 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
2374 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
2375 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
2376 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
2377 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
2379 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
2380 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
2382 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
2383 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
2384 categories if not specified by dircolors.
2386 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
2388 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
2389 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
2391 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
2392 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
2394 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
2396 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
2397 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
2399 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
2400 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
2402 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
2403 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
2404 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
2406 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
2408 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
2410 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
2414 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
2416 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
2417 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
2418 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
2420 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
2421 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
2423 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
2424 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
2425 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
2427 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
2428 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
2430 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
2431 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
2432 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
2433 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
2435 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
2436 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
2438 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
2439 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
2440 the file system does not support it.
2442 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
2444 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
2445 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
2447 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
2449 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
2450 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
2452 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
2453 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
2454 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
2455 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
2457 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
2458 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
2461 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
2462 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
2463 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
2464 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
2466 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
2467 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
2468 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
2469 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
2471 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
2472 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
2474 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
2476 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
2477 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
2478 reporting incorrect results.
2482 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
2483 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
2485 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
2488 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
2490 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
2491 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2493 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2494 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2496 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2499 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2500 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2501 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2502 the file name does not look like a page range.
2504 printf has several changes:
2506 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2507 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2509 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2510 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2511 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2513 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2514 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2517 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2518 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2520 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2521 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2523 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2525 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2526 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2528 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2530 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2532 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2533 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2534 when first encountering the directory.
2538 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2539 output; POSIX requires this.
2541 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2542 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2544 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2546 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2547 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2549 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2550 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2552 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2553 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2554 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2555 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2556 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2557 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2558 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2560 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2561 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2562 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2564 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2565 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2567 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2569 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2571 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2572 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2573 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2574 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2576 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2580 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2581 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2582 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2583 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2584 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2586 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2587 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2588 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2590 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2591 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2593 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2594 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2596 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2597 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2598 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2599 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2600 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2602 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2603 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2605 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2606 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2608 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2610 nocreat do not create the output file
2611 excl fail if the output file already exists
2612 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2613 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2615 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2617 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2618 direct use direct I/O for data
2619 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2620 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2621 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2622 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2623 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2625 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2627 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2628 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2631 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2632 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2633 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2634 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2635 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2636 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2638 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2639 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2641 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2644 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2646 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2648 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2649 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2651 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2652 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2653 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2655 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2656 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2657 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2659 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2661 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2662 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2664 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2665 for compatibility with bash.
2667 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2669 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2670 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2671 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2672 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2674 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2675 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2677 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2678 ls supports TABSIZE.
2679 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2680 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2681 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2683 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2686 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2688 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2689 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2690 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2691 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2692 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2693 an offset, not as a file name.
2695 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2696 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2698 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2699 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2701 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2702 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2704 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2705 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2706 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2708 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2709 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2711 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2712 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2716 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2718 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2720 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2724 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2725 or more arguments between partitions.
2727 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2728 holes in the destination.
2730 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2731 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2732 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2733 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2734 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2735 terminates immediately.
2737 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2739 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2741 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2742 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2743 not the empty string.
2745 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2746 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2750 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2751 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2752 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2755 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2762 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2766 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2767 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2769 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2770 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2772 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2773 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2774 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2777 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2781 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2782 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2784 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2785 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2787 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2788 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2789 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2791 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2793 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2796 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2798 ** Configuration option
2800 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2801 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2805 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2806 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2810 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2811 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2812 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2815 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2816 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2817 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2818 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2819 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2820 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2821 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2824 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2828 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2829 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2830 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2832 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2833 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2835 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2837 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2838 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2839 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2840 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2842 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2844 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2845 not just the ones that reference directories
2847 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2848 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2850 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2851 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2852 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2854 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2855 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2856 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2857 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2858 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2859 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2861 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2866 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2867 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2869 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2871 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2873 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2875 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2876 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2878 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2879 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2881 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2883 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2887 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2889 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2891 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2892 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2893 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2894 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2895 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2897 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2898 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2900 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2901 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2903 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2904 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2906 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2907 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2908 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2912 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2913 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2914 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2915 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2916 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2917 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2918 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2919 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2920 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2921 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2922 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2923 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2924 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2925 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2927 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2929 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2930 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2932 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2934 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2936 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2937 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2939 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2941 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2942 without a trailing newline.
2944 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2945 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2947 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2950 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2954 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2956 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2958 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2959 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2960 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2961 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2963 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2965 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2966 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2967 be printed without leading spaces.
2969 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2970 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2975 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2976 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2977 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2979 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2981 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2982 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2984 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2985 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2987 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2988 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2990 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2992 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2994 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2996 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2997 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2999 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
3001 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
3003 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
3004 byte offsets are specified.
3007 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
3010 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
3013 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
3014 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
3015 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
3016 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
3017 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
3018 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
3019 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
3020 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
3021 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
3022 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
3023 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
3024 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
3025 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
3026 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
3027 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
3028 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
3029 directory where M has write access.
3030 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
3031 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
3032 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
3035 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
3036 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
3037 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
3038 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
3039 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
3040 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
3041 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
3042 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
3043 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
3044 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
3045 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
3046 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
3047 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
3048 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
3049 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
3050 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
3051 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
3052 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
3053 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
3054 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
3055 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
3056 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
3057 appeared one additional time.
3059 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
3060 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
3061 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
3062 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
3065 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
3066 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
3067 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
3068 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
3069 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
3070 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
3071 if there were more than 338.
3073 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
3074 - false --help now exits nonzero
3077 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
3078 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
3079 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
3080 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
3083 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
3084 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
3085 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
3086 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
3087 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
3090 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
3091 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
3092 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
3093 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
3094 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
3095 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
3096 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3099 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
3100 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
3101 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
3102 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
3103 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
3104 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
3106 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3107 under certain unusual conditions
3108 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
3109 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
3112 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
3113 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
3114 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
3115 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
3116 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
3117 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
3118 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
3119 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
3120 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
3121 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
3122 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
3123 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
3124 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
3125 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
3126 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
3127 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
3130 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
3131 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
3134 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
3135 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
3136 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
3137 involving hard-linked directories
3138 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
3139 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
3140 character-special and block files
3143 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
3144 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
3145 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
3146 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
3147 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
3148 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
3149 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
3150 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
3151 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
3153 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
3154 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
3155 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
3156 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
3157 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
3158 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
3159 specified on the command line.
3160 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
3161 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
3162 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
3163 the first file untouched.
3164 * readlink: new program
3165 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
3166 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
3167 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
3168 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
3169 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
3170 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
3173 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
3174 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
3175 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
3176 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
3177 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
3178 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
3179 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
3180 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
3181 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
3182 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
3183 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
3184 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
3186 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
3187 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
3188 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
3190 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
3191 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
3192 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
3193 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
3194 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
3195 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
3196 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
3197 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
3200 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
3201 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
3204 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
3205 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
3206 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
3207 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
3208 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
3209 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
3210 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
3213 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
3214 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
3216 ========================================================================
3217 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
3218 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3221 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
3223 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
3224 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
3225 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
3226 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
3227 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
3228 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
3229 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
3230 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
3231 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
3232 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
3233 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
3234 The old options will continue to work for a while.
3236 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
3237 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
3238 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
3239 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
3241 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
3244 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
3246 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
3247 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
3248 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
3249 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
3250 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
3251 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
3252 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
3255 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
3256 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
3257 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
3258 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
3259 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
3260 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
3261 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
3262 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
3263 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
3264 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
3265 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
3266 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
3267 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
3268 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
3269 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
3270 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
3272 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
3273 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
3275 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
3276 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
3277 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
3278 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
3279 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
3280 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
3282 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
3283 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
3284 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
3285 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
3286 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
3287 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
3288 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
3290 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
3291 the source files in the following example:
3292 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
3293 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
3294 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
3295 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
3296 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
3297 links between source files with --preserve=links
3298 * cp accepts new options:
3299 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
3300 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
3301 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
3302 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
3303 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
3304 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
3305 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
3306 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
3307 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
3309 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
3310 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
3311 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
3312 even though it's older than dest.
3313 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
3314 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
3315 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
3316 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
3317 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
3319 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
3320 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
3321 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
3322 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
3323 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
3324 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
3325 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
3327 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
3328 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
3329 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
3331 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
3332 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
3333 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
3334 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
3335 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
3336 This is the default.
3338 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
3339 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
3340 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
3341 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
3342 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
3344 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
3347 ========================================================================
3348 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
3349 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
3352 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
3353 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
3355 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3356 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
3357 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
3358 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
3359 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
3361 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
3362 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
3363 that specifies a non-directory
3366 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
3367 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
3368 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
3369 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
3370 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
3371 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
3372 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
3373 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
3374 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
3375 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
3376 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
3377 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
3378 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
3379 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
3380 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
3381 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
3382 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
3383 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
3384 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
3385 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
3386 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
3387 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
3388 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
3389 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
3391 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
3392 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
3393 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
3395 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
3397 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
3398 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
3400 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
3401 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
3402 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
3403 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
3404 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
3406 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
3407 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
3408 required support; from Bruno Haible.
3409 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
3410 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
3412 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
3414 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
3415 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
3416 * still more portability fixes
3417 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
3418 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3420 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
3422 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
3424 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
3426 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
3427 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
3428 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
3429 there is any time remaining
3430 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
3432 ========================================================================
3433 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
3434 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
3436 This package began as the union of the following:
3437 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
3439 ========================================================================
3441 Copyright (C) 2001-2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3443 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
3444 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
3445 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
3446 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
3447 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
3448 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.