1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
7 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
8 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
10 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
12 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
14 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
16 ** Programs no longer installed by default
20 ** Changes in behavior
22 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
23 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
25 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
26 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
28 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
29 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
30 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
34 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
35 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
36 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
37 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
38 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
39 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
40 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
41 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
42 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
43 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
44 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
46 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
49 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
50 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
51 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
53 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
54 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
55 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
60 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
61 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
62 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
63 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
65 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
66 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
67 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
68 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
69 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
70 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
73 ** Remove deprecated options
75 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
76 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
77 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
78 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
79 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
81 ** Improved robustness
83 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
84 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
85 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
86 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
87 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
88 loss of the contents of a/f.
90 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
91 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
95 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
96 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
97 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
99 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
100 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
101 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
102 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
104 cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
105 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
106 longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
107 components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
108 d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
109 destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
110 copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
111 to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
112 doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
113 the destination is a symlink.
115 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
117 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
118 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
120 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
121 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
123 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
125 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
126 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
128 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
129 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
131 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
134 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
135 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
137 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
138 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
140 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
141 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
142 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
143 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
145 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
146 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
147 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
149 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
150 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
151 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
153 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
154 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
155 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
156 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
158 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
159 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
160 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
162 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
163 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
165 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
166 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
168 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
170 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
171 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
172 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
174 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
175 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
177 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
178 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
180 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
181 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
183 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
184 [present in the original version]
187 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
191 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
193 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
194 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
195 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
197 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
198 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
200 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
204 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
205 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
207 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
208 support but with insufficient /proc support.
210 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
211 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
213 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
214 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
215 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
216 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
217 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
218 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
220 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
221 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
224 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
225 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
227 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
230 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
231 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
232 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
234 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
235 directory is unreadable.
237 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
238 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
239 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
241 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
242 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
243 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
244 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
245 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
248 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
249 Before it would print nothing.
251 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
253 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
254 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
255 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
256 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
257 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
258 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
259 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
260 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
262 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
266 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
267 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
268 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
270 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
271 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
272 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
273 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
276 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
280 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
281 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
282 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
283 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
284 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
285 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
286 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
288 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
289 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
290 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
291 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
292 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
293 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
294 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
295 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
297 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
298 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
299 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
302 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
306 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
307 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
309 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
310 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
311 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
313 ** Improved robustness
315 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
316 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
317 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
320 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
324 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
325 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
326 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
327 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
328 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
330 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
334 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
337 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
341 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
342 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
343 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
344 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
346 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
347 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
349 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
350 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
351 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
354 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
356 ** Improved robustness
358 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
359 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
361 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
362 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
363 or NFS-mounted partition.
365 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
366 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
370 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
371 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
372 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
373 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
374 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
375 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
377 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
378 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
380 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
381 or neglect to report file removal.
383 For the "groups" command:
385 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
386 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
388 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
390 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
392 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
396 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
397 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
400 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
402 ** Changes in behavior
404 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
405 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
406 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
407 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
409 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
410 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
411 a final `./' or `../' component.
413 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
414 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
417 ** Infrastructure changes
419 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
420 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
421 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
422 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
426 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
429 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
430 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
431 dirent.d_type support.
433 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
434 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
436 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
437 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
438 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
439 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
442 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
444 ** Changes in behavior
446 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
450 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
451 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
455 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
456 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
457 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
459 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
460 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
462 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
463 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
465 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
467 ** Improved robustness
469 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
470 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
471 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
473 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
474 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
477 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
478 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
480 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
481 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
483 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
484 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
486 ** Changes in behavior
488 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
489 where the two are distinct.
491 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
492 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
493 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
494 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
495 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
496 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
497 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
498 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
499 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
500 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
501 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
502 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
503 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
504 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
505 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
506 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
507 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
509 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
510 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
511 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
513 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
514 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
515 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
516 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
519 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
520 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
524 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
525 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
526 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
527 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
529 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
530 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
531 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
533 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
534 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
535 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
536 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
537 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
540 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
541 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
543 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
544 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
545 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
546 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
548 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
549 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
550 successful and the output is easier to parse.
552 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
553 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
554 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
555 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
557 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
558 and sticky) with the -m option.
560 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
561 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
562 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
563 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
564 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
566 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
567 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
569 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
573 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
574 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
575 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
576 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
578 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
580 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
582 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
583 silently ignoring one of them.
585 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
586 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
587 containing this change was 5.92.
589 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
590 automatically newline terminated.
592 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
593 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
594 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
595 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
598 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
599 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
600 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
603 ** Scheduled for removal
605 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
606 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
608 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
609 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
610 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
611 command to unlink a directory.
613 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
614 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
615 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
616 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
620 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
621 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
622 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
623 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
624 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
625 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
629 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
630 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
632 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
634 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
635 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
636 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
638 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
639 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
642 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
643 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
645 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
646 list directories before files.
648 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
649 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
650 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
651 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
654 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
656 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
658 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
659 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
660 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
662 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
663 list of NUL-terminated file names.
667 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
668 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
669 usually printing nothing.
671 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
673 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
674 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
675 them with hard-linked directories.
677 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
678 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
679 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
681 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
682 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
683 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
685 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
688 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
689 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
691 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
692 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
694 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
695 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
697 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
698 all command-line arguments.
700 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
702 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
704 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
705 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
707 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
709 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
710 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
711 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
712 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
713 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
715 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
716 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
718 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
719 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
720 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
721 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
723 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
725 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
729 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
730 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
732 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
733 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
735 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
736 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
738 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
739 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
741 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
742 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
744 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
746 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
747 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
748 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
751 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
753 ** Build-related bug fixes
755 installing .mo files would fail
758 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
762 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
764 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
767 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
771 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
772 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
776 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
778 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
779 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
781 ** Deprecated options
783 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
784 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
786 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
790 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
792 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
793 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
794 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
795 conforming to older POSIX versions.
797 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
800 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
806 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
811 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
813 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
815 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
816 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
817 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
819 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
820 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
821 problematic usages. These include:
823 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
824 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
825 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
826 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
827 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
828 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
829 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
830 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
831 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
833 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
834 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
836 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
837 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
838 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
839 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
841 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
842 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
843 between binary and text files.
845 The following programs now always use text input/output:
849 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
853 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
854 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
857 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
859 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
860 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
862 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
863 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
864 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
866 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
868 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
870 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
871 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
872 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
876 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
878 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
879 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
881 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
882 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
883 blocks until F contains N blocks.
887 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
888 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
892 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
893 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
894 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
898 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
899 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
903 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
905 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
907 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
911 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
912 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
913 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
915 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
916 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
917 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
918 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
919 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
921 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
925 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
926 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
927 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
929 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
931 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
932 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
933 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
934 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
936 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
938 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
939 rather than silently wrapping around.
941 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
942 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
944 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
945 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
947 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
948 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
949 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
952 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
954 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
956 ** Improved robustness
958 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
959 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
960 no matter how large the result.
962 ** Improved portability
964 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
965 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
967 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
969 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
970 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
971 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
973 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
974 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
978 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
979 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
981 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
983 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
984 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
985 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
986 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
988 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
989 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
991 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
992 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
993 categories if not specified by dircolors.
995 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
997 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
998 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1000 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1001 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1003 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1005 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1006 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1008 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1009 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1011 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1012 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1013 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1015 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1017 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1019 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1023 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1025 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1026 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1027 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1029 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1030 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1032 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1033 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1034 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1036 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1037 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1039 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1040 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1041 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1042 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1044 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1045 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1047 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1048 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1049 the file system does not support it.
1051 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1053 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1054 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1056 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1058 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1059 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1061 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1062 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1063 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1064 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1066 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1067 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1070 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1071 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1072 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1073 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1075 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1076 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1077 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1078 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1080 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1081 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1083 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1085 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1086 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1087 reporting incorrect results.
1091 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1092 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1094 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1097 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1099 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1100 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
1102 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1103 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1105 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1108 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1109 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1110 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1111 the file name does not look like a page range.
1113 printf has several changes:
1115 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1116 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1118 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1119 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1120 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1122 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1123 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1126 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1127 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1129 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1130 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1132 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1134 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1135 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1137 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1139 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1141 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1142 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1143 when first encountering the directory.
1147 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1148 output; POSIX requires this.
1150 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1151 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1153 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1155 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1156 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1158 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1159 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1161 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1162 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1163 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1164 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1165 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1166 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1167 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1169 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1170 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1171 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1173 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1174 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1176 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1178 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1180 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1181 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1182 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1183 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1185 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1189 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1190 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1191 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1192 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1193 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1195 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1196 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1197 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1199 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1200 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1202 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1203 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1205 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1206 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1207 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1208 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1209 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1211 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1212 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1214 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1215 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1217 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1219 nocreat do not create the output file
1220 excl fail if the output file already exists
1221 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1222 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1224 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1226 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1227 direct use direct I/O for data
1228 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1229 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1230 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1231 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1232 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1234 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1236 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1237 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1240 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1241 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1242 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1243 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1244 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1245 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1247 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1248 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1250 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1253 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1255 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1257 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1258 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1260 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1261 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1262 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1264 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1265 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1266 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1268 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1270 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1271 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1273 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1274 for compatibility with bash.
1276 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1278 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1279 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1280 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1281 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1283 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1284 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1286 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1287 ls supports TABSIZE.
1288 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1289 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1290 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1292 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1295 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1297 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1298 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1299 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1300 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1301 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1302 an offset, not as a file name.
1304 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1305 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1307 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1308 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1310 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1311 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1313 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1314 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1315 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1317 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1318 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1320 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1321 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1325 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1327 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1329 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1333 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1334 or more arguments between partitions.
1336 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1337 holes in the destination.
1339 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1340 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1341 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1342 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1343 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1344 terminates immediately.
1346 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1348 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1350 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1351 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1352 not the empty string.
1354 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1355 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1359 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1360 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1361 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1364 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1371 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1375 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1376 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1378 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1379 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1381 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1382 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1383 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1386 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1390 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1391 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1393 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1394 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1396 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1397 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1398 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1400 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1402 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1405 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1407 ** Configuration option
1409 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1410 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1414 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1415 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1419 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1420 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1421 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1424 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1425 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1426 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1427 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1428 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1429 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1430 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1433 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1437 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1438 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1439 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1441 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1442 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1444 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1446 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1447 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1448 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1449 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1451 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1453 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1454 not just the ones that reference directories
1456 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1457 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1459 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1460 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1461 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1463 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1464 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1465 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1466 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1467 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1468 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1470 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1475 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1476 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1478 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1480 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1482 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1484 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1485 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1487 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1488 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1490 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1492 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1496 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1498 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1500 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1501 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1502 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1503 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1504 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1506 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1507 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1509 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1510 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1512 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1513 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1515 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1516 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1517 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1521 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1522 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1523 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1524 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1525 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1526 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1527 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1528 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1529 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1530 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1531 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1532 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1533 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1534 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1536 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1538 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1539 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1541 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1543 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1545 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1546 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1548 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1550 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1551 without a trailing newline.
1553 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1554 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1556 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1559 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1563 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1565 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1567 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1568 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1569 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1570 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1572 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1574 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1575 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1576 be printed without leading spaces.
1578 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1579 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1584 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1585 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1586 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1588 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1590 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1591 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1593 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1594 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1596 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1597 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1599 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1601 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1603 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1605 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1606 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1608 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1610 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1612 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1613 byte offsets are specified.
1616 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1619 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1622 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1623 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1624 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1625 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1626 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1627 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1628 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1629 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1630 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1631 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1632 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1633 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1634 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1635 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1636 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1637 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1638 directory where M has write access.
1639 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1640 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1641 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1644 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1645 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1646 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1647 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1648 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1649 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1650 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1651 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1652 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1653 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1654 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1655 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1656 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1657 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1658 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1659 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1660 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1661 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1662 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1663 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1664 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1665 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1666 appeared one additional time.
1668 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1669 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1670 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1671 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1674 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1675 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1676 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1677 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1678 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1679 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1680 if there were more than 338.
1682 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1683 - false --help now exits nonzero
1686 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1687 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1688 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1689 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1692 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1693 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1694 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1695 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1696 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1699 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1700 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1701 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1702 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1703 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1704 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1705 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1708 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1709 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1710 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1711 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1712 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1713 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1715 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1716 under certain unusual conditions
1717 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1718 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1721 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1722 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1723 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1724 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1725 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1726 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1727 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1728 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1729 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1730 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1731 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1732 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1733 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1734 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1735 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1736 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1739 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1740 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1743 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1744 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1745 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1746 involving hard-linked directories
1747 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1748 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1749 character-special and block files
1752 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1753 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1754 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1755 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1756 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1757 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1758 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1759 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1760 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1762 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1763 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1764 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1765 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1766 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1767 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1768 specified on the command line.
1769 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1770 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1771 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1772 the first file untouched.
1773 * readlink: new program
1774 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1775 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1776 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1777 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1778 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1779 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1782 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1783 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1784 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1785 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1786 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1787 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1788 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1789 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1790 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1791 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1792 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1793 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1795 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1796 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1797 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1799 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1800 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1801 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1802 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1803 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1804 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1805 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1806 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1809 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1810 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1813 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1814 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1815 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1816 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1817 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1818 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1819 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1822 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1823 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1825 ========================================================================
1826 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1827 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1830 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1832 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1833 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1834 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1835 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1836 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1837 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1838 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1839 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1840 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1841 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1842 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1843 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1845 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1846 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1847 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1848 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1850 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1853 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1855 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1856 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1857 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1858 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1859 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1860 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1861 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1864 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1865 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1866 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1867 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1868 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1869 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1870 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1871 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1872 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1873 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1874 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1875 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1876 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1877 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1878 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1879 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1881 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1882 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1884 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1885 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1886 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1887 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1888 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1889 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1891 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1892 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1893 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1894 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1895 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1896 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1897 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1899 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1900 the source files in the following example:
1901 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1902 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1903 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1904 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1905 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1906 links between source files with --preserve=links
1907 * cp accepts new options:
1908 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1909 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1910 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1911 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1912 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1913 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1914 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1915 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1916 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1918 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1919 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1920 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1921 even though it's older than dest.
1922 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1923 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1924 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1925 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1926 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1928 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1929 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1930 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1931 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1932 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1933 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1934 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1936 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1937 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1938 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1940 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1941 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1942 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1943 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1944 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1945 This is the default.
1947 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1948 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1949 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1950 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1951 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1953 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1956 ========================================================================
1957 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1958 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1961 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1962 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1964 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1965 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1966 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1967 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1968 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1970 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1971 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1972 that specifies a non-directory
1975 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1976 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1977 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1978 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1979 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1980 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1981 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1982 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1983 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1984 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1985 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1986 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1987 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1988 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1989 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1990 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1991 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1992 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1993 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1994 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1995 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1996 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1997 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1998 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2000 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2001 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2002 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2004 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2006 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2007 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2009 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2010 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2011 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2012 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2013 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2015 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2016 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2017 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2018 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2019 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2021 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2023 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2024 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2025 * still more portability fixes
2026 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2027 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2029 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2031 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2033 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2035 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2036 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2037 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2038 there is any time remaining
2039 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2041 ========================================================================
2042 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2043 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2045 This package began as the union of the following:
2046 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2048 ========================================================================
2050 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
2053 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2054 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
2055 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2056 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2057 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2058 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.