1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 6.2-cvs (2006-??-??) [unstable]
7 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
8 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
9 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
10 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
12 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
13 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
14 a final `./' or `../' component.
16 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
17 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
20 ** Infrastructure changes
22 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
23 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
24 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
25 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
29 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
32 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
33 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
34 dirent.d_type support.
36 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
37 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
39 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
40 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
41 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
42 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
45 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
47 ** Changes in behavior
49 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
53 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
54 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
58 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
59 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
60 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
62 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
63 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
65 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
66 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
68 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
70 ** Improved robustness
72 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
73 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
74 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
76 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
77 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
80 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
81 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
83 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
84 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
86 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
87 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
89 ** Changes in behavior
91 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
92 where the two are distinct.
94 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
95 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
96 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
97 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
98 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
99 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
100 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
101 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
102 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
103 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
104 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
105 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
106 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
107 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
108 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
109 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
110 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
112 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
113 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
114 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
116 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
117 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
118 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
119 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
122 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
123 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
127 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
128 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
129 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
130 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
132 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
133 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
134 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
136 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
137 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
138 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
139 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
140 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
143 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
144 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
146 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
147 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
148 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
149 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
151 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
152 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
153 successful and the output is easier to parse.
155 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
156 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
157 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
158 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
160 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
161 and sticky) with the -m option.
163 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
164 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
165 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
166 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
167 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
169 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
170 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
172 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
176 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
177 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
178 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
179 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
181 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
183 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
185 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
186 silently ignoring one of them.
188 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
189 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
190 containing this change was 5.92.
192 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
193 automatically newline terminated.
195 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
196 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
197 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
198 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
201 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
202 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
203 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
206 ** Scheduled for removal
208 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
209 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
211 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
212 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
213 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
214 command to unlink a directory.
216 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
217 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
218 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
219 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
223 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
224 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
225 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
226 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
227 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
228 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
232 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
233 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
235 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
237 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
238 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
239 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
241 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
242 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
245 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
246 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
248 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
249 list directories before files.
251 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
252 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
253 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
254 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
257 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
259 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
261 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
262 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
263 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
265 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
266 list of NUL-terminated file names.
270 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
271 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
272 usually printing nothing.
274 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
276 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
277 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
278 them with hard-linked directories.
280 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
281 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
282 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
284 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
285 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
286 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
288 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
291 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
292 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
294 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
295 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
297 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
298 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
300 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
301 all command-line arguments.
303 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
305 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
307 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
308 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
310 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
312 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
313 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
314 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
315 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
316 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
318 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
319 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
321 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
322 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
323 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
324 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
326 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
328 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
332 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
333 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
335 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
336 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
338 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
339 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
341 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
342 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
344 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
345 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
347 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
349 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
350 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
351 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
354 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
356 ** Build-related bug fixes
358 installing .mo files would fail
361 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
365 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
367 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
370 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
374 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
375 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
379 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
381 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
382 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
384 ** Deprecated options
386 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
387 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
389 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
393 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
395 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
396 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
397 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
398 conforming to older POSIX versions.
400 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
403 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
409 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
414 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
416 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
418 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
419 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
420 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
422 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
423 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
424 problematic usages. These include:
426 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
427 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
428 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
429 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
430 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
431 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
432 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
433 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
434 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
436 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
437 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
439 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
440 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
441 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
442 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
444 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
445 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
446 between binary and text files.
448 The following programs now always use text input/output:
452 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
456 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
457 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
460 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
462 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
463 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
465 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
466 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
467 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
469 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
471 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
473 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
474 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
475 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
479 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
481 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
482 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
484 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
485 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
486 blocks until F contains N blocks.
490 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
491 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
495 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
496 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
497 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
501 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
502 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
506 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
508 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
510 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
514 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
515 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
516 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
518 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
519 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
520 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
521 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
522 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
524 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
528 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
529 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
530 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
532 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
534 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
535 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
536 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
537 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
539 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
541 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
542 rather than silently wrapping around.
544 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
545 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
547 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
548 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
550 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
551 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
552 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
555 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
557 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
559 ** Improved robustness
561 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
562 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
563 no matter how large the result.
565 ** Improved portability
567 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
568 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
570 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
572 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
573 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
574 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
576 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
577 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
581 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
582 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
584 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
586 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
587 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
588 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
589 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
591 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
592 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
594 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
595 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
596 categories if not specified by dircolors.
598 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
600 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
601 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
603 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
604 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
606 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
608 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
609 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
611 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
612 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
614 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
615 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
616 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
618 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
620 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
622 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
626 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
628 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
629 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
630 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
632 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
633 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
635 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
636 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
637 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
639 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
640 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
642 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
643 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
644 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
645 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
647 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
648 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
650 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
651 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
652 the file system does not support it.
654 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
656 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
657 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
659 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
661 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
662 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
664 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
665 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
666 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
667 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
669 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
670 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
673 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
674 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
675 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
676 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
678 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
679 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
680 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
681 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
683 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
684 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
686 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
688 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
689 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
690 reporting incorrect results.
694 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
695 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
697 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
700 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
702 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
703 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
705 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
706 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
708 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
711 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
712 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
713 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
714 the file name does not look like a page range.
716 printf has several changes:
718 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
719 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
721 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
722 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
723 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
725 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
726 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
729 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
730 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
732 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
733 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
735 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
737 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
738 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
740 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
742 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
744 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
745 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
746 when first encountering the directory.
750 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
751 output; POSIX requires this.
753 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
754 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
756 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
758 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
759 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
761 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
762 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
764 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
765 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
766 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
767 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
768 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
769 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
770 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
772 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
773 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
774 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
776 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
777 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
779 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
781 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
783 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
784 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
785 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
786 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
788 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
792 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
793 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
794 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
795 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
796 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
798 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
799 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
800 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
802 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
803 is longer than PATH_MAX.
805 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
806 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
808 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
809 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
810 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
811 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
812 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
814 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
815 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
817 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
818 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
820 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
822 nocreat do not create the output file
823 excl fail if the output file already exists
824 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
825 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
827 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
829 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
830 direct use direct I/O for data
831 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
832 sync likewise, but also for metadata
833 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
834 nofollow do not follow symlinks
835 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
837 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
839 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
840 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
843 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
844 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
845 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
846 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
847 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
848 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
850 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
851 list of NUL-terminated file names.
853 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
856 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
858 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
860 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
861 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
863 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
864 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
865 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
867 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
868 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
869 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
871 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
873 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
874 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
876 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
877 for compatibility with bash.
879 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
881 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
882 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
883 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
884 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
886 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
887 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
889 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
891 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
892 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
893 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
895 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
898 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
900 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
901 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
902 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
903 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
904 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
905 an offset, not as a file name.
907 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
908 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
910 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
911 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
913 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
914 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
916 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
917 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
918 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
920 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
921 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
923 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
924 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
928 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
930 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
932 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
936 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
937 or more arguments between partitions.
939 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
940 holes in the destination.
942 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
943 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
944 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
945 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
946 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
947 terminates immediately.
949 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
951 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
953 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
954 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
955 not the empty string.
957 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
958 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
962 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
963 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
964 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
967 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
974 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
978 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
979 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
981 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
982 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
984 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
985 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
986 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
989 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
993 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
994 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
996 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
997 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
999 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1000 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1001 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1003 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1005 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1008 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1010 ** Configuration option
1012 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1013 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1017 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1018 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1022 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1023 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1024 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1027 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1028 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1029 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1030 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1031 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1032 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1033 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1036 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1040 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1041 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1042 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1044 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1045 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1047 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1049 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1050 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1051 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1052 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1054 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1056 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1057 not just the ones that reference directories
1059 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1060 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1062 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1063 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1064 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1066 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1067 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1068 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1069 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1070 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1071 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1073 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1078 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1079 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1081 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1083 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1085 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1087 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1088 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1090 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1091 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1093 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1095 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1099 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1101 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1103 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1104 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1105 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1106 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1107 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1109 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1110 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1112 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1113 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1115 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1116 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1118 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1119 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1120 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1124 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1125 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1126 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1127 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1128 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1129 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1130 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1131 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1132 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1133 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1134 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1135 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1136 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1137 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1139 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1141 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1142 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1144 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1146 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1148 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1149 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1151 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1153 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1154 without a trailing newline.
1156 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1157 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1159 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1162 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1166 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1168 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1170 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1171 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1172 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1173 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1175 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1177 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1178 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1179 be printed without leading spaces.
1181 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1182 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1187 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1188 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1189 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1191 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1193 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1194 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1196 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1197 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1199 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1200 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1202 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1204 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1206 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1208 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1209 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1211 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1213 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1215 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1216 byte offsets are specified.
1219 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1222 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1225 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1226 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1227 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1228 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1229 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1230 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1231 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1232 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1233 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1234 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1235 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1236 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1237 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1238 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1239 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1240 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1241 directory where M has write access.
1242 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1243 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1244 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1247 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1248 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1249 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1250 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1251 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1252 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1253 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1254 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1255 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1256 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1257 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1258 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1259 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1260 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1261 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1262 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1263 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1264 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1265 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1266 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1267 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1268 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1269 appeared one additional time.
1271 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1272 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1273 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1274 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1277 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1278 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1279 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1280 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1281 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1282 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1283 if there were more than 338.
1285 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1286 - false --help now exits nonzero
1289 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1290 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1291 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1292 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1295 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1296 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1297 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1298 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1299 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1302 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1303 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1304 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1305 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1306 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1307 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1308 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1311 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1312 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1313 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1314 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1315 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1316 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1318 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1319 under certain unusual conditions
1320 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1321 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1324 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1325 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1326 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1327 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1328 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1329 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1330 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1331 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1332 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1333 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1334 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1335 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1336 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1337 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1338 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1339 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1342 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1343 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1346 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1347 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1348 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1349 involving hard-linked directories
1350 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1351 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1352 character-special and block files
1355 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1356 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1357 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1358 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1359 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1360 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1361 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1362 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1363 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1365 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1366 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1367 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1368 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1369 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1370 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1371 specified on the command line.
1372 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1373 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1374 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1375 the first file untouched.
1376 * readlink: new program
1377 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1378 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1379 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1380 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1381 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1382 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1385 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1386 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1387 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1388 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1389 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1390 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1391 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1392 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1393 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1394 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1395 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1396 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1398 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1399 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1400 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1402 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1403 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1404 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1405 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1406 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1407 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1408 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1409 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1412 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1413 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1416 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1417 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1418 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1419 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1420 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1421 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1422 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1425 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1426 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1428 ========================================================================
1429 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1430 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1433 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1435 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1436 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1437 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1438 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1439 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1440 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1441 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1442 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1443 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1444 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1445 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1446 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1448 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1449 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1450 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1451 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1453 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1456 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1458 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1459 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1460 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1461 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1462 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1463 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1464 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1467 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1468 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1469 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1470 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1471 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1472 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1473 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1474 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1475 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1476 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1477 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1478 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1479 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1480 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1481 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1482 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1484 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1485 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1487 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1488 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1489 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1490 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1491 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1492 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1494 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1495 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1496 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1497 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1498 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1499 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1500 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1502 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1503 the source files in the following example:
1504 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1505 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1506 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1507 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1508 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1509 links between source files with --preserve=links
1510 * cp accepts new options:
1511 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1512 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1513 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1514 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1515 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1516 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1517 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1518 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1519 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1521 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1522 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1523 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1524 even though it's older than dest.
1525 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1526 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1527 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1528 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1529 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1531 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1532 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1533 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1534 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1535 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1536 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1537 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1539 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1540 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1541 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1543 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1544 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1545 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1546 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1547 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1548 This is the default.
1550 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1551 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1552 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1553 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1554 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1556 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1559 ========================================================================
1560 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1561 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1564 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1565 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1567 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1568 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1569 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1570 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1571 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1573 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1574 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1575 that specifies a non-directory
1578 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1579 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1580 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1581 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1582 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1583 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1584 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1585 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1586 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1587 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1588 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1589 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1590 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1591 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1592 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1593 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1594 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1595 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1596 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1597 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1598 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1599 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1600 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1601 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1603 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1604 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1605 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1607 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1609 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1610 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1612 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1613 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1614 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1615 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1616 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1618 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1619 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1620 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1621 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1622 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1624 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1626 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1627 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1628 * still more portability fixes
1629 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1630 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1632 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1634 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1636 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1638 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1639 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1640 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1641 there is any time remaining
1642 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1644 ========================================================================
1645 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1646 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1648 This package began as the union of the following:
1649 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1651 ========================================================================
1653 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1656 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1657 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1658 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1659 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1660 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1661 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.