1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release ?.? (????-??-??) [?]
7 ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive.
8 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
10 sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks
11 in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are
12 handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat
13 that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively.
17 join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each
18 file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally.
20 timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill
21 signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified
22 duration after the initial signal was sent.
24 who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting
25 messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was
26 not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the
27 permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file.
28 Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root",
29 that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite
30 of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured
31 using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group
32 of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified).
34 ** Changes in behavior
36 ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape
37 sequence when it would be a no-op.
39 join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on
40 each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters).
43 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable]
47 nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count
48 of available processors, which may not have been the case
49 on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available.
50 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
54 Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>.
55 Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap.
57 Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in
58 gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's
59 own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older
60 glibc <wchar.h> headers.
62 Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers
63 were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure
64 detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect.
67 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable]
71 cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error
72 message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel.
73 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12].
75 ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling
76 symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors.
77 [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0]
79 pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names.
80 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2]
82 rm -r --one-file-system works once again.
83 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
84 a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories.
85 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
87 stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2,
88 and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3.
89 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
91 tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files.
92 The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those
93 files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed.
94 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
96 tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly
97 renamed-aside and then recreated.
98 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
100 tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files.
101 E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would
102 make tail stop tracking additions to "b".
103 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
105 touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such
106 as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps.
107 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
109 wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent
110 processes will not intersperse their output.
111 [the issue dates back to the initial implementation]
114 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable]
118 id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer
119 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
121 id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support.
122 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1]
124 rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly.
125 The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby
126 a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to
127 the presence of the empty string argument.
128 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
130 sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
131 Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message
132 if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent
133 ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
135 tail without -f no longer access uninitialized memory
136 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
138 timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent.
139 Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message
140 if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6]
142 a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory,
143 with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory,
144 and with a malicious user on the same system
145 was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution
146 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0]
149 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable]
153 chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled.
154 Even then, chcon may still be useful.
155 [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0]
157 chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle
158 and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the
159 offending directory and all "contents."
161 env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the
162 environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid
163 name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation]
165 ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously
166 files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files
167 without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
169 md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent
170 processes will not intersperse their output.
171 This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
172 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
174 mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to
175 output the name of the file to stdout.
176 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
178 nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority
179 call fails with errno == EACCES.
180 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
182 nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if
183 they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning
186 stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS,
187 btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3,
188 nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs
190 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition.
191 Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial
192 read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored
193 initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file
194 were first renamed or unlinked or never modified.
195 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5]
197 tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been
198 replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences
199 of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well.
200 [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5]
202 timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does,
203 for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0].
205 ** Changes in behavior
207 chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on
208 internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this
209 is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity
210 with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup
211 fails with status 125 instead of 127.
213 du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted
214 directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs
215 during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would
216 usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt.
218 echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B).
220 rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic
221 on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case.
222 Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic.
223 Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather
224 than the less precise "Read-only file system" error.
228 nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process.
232 env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to
233 avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment.
235 md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums.
236 So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum.
238 mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix
239 after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as
240 "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix.
242 touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to
243 change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support.
246 * Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta]
250 cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even
251 when the source file doesn't have write access.
252 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
254 touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60,
255 to accommodate leap seconds.
256 [the bug dates back to the initial implementation]
258 ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently
259 when the color of a more specific type is disabled.
260 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
262 ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle
264 ls -is is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned
265 from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0",
266 for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink.
268 tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written
269 just before the process dies might not have been output by tail.
270 Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live.
271 [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5,
272 and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o]
276 On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as
277 file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX
278 rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceeding name is a
279 directory or a symlink to a directory.
281 ** Changes in behavior
283 id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT
284 environment variable is set.
286 readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the
287 last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created,
288 since mkdir will succeed in that case.
292 ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P),
293 added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like
294 GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on
295 BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks.
297 stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input.
298 With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected.
299 If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as
300 "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments.
304 rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts
305 This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological
306 cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case.
308 rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time
309 was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear.
310 However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for
311 very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name
312 length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to
313 avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to
316 rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on
317 write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB.
320 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable]
324 cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is
325 due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers
326 and libraries tested at configure time.
327 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
329 cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file.
330 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
332 cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure.
333 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
335 dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while
336 printing a summary to stderr.
337 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
339 dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size
340 of the input was not a multiple of N bytes.
341 [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation]
343 df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable
344 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3]
346 ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points.
347 This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir,
348 because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid
349 inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
351 tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking.
352 Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd
353 Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered,
354 which is relatively unusual.
355 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
357 tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f
358 would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd
359 would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the
360 relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the
361 offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based
362 (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation.
363 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5]
367 ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an
368 existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem.
369 Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a
370 system, each command reports the error, e.g.,
371 link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory
375 cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to
376 a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible.
378 ** Changes in behavior
380 tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
381 tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO.
382 Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified,
383 and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates
384 immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely.
387 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable]
391 dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input
392 is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes.
394 dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received
395 before data copying has started.
397 install runs faster again with SELinux enabled
398 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
400 ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory)
401 would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory.
402 Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU.
403 [introduced in coreutils-7.0]
405 sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified
406 before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining
407 part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key.
408 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".]
410 truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in
415 stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering
416 for its standard streams.
418 ** Changes in behavior
420 ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently
421 by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment
422 variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input
423 variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables
424 were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since
425 coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced.
427 ** Deprecated options
429 nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option
430 maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i.
434 chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups.
436 cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy
437 using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within
440 cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible
442 sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers
443 while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc.
445 tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive
446 to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files.
449 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable]
453 date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date
454 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other
455 day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week.
456 [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ]
458 date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3
459 release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future.
460 Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to
461 human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball)
462 and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git
467 make check: two tests have been corrected
471 There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD,
472 inherited from gnulib.
475 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable]
479 cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when
480 --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a.
481 Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics
482 when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested.
484 ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month
485 names from the locale database that have differing widths.
487 ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly
489 mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file
490 systems without xattr support.
492 sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file.
493 E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault.
494 [introduced in coreutils-7.2]
496 ** Changes in behavior
498 shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default.
499 This is mainly noticable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by
500 default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom
501 was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems.
503 ** Improved robustness
505 cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents
506 of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a
507 destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater.
508 Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return
509 a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX
510 allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read
511 syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least
512 2.6.9 through 2.6.29.
513 [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0]
517 df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for
518 which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open.
520 `id -G $USER` now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it
521 would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop,
522 due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations.
523 [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11]
524 [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1]
527 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable]
531 pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For
532 compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior
533 unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested.
537 cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed.
538 Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough
539 data was read, or on process exit.
540 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
542 comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair
543 of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would
544 fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k
545 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]
547 cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away,
548 rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy.
549 The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l).
550 [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1]
552 ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently.
553 Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't.
555 pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines
556 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
558 sort now handles specified key ends correctly.
559 Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be
560 included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3.
562 ** Changes in behavior
564 cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum
565 of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading
566 cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems.
568 cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not
569 diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does.
571 ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the
572 LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like
573 this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/`
576 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable]
580 Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2
582 cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified
583 mv: Always tries to copy xattrs
584 install: Never copies xattrs
586 cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain
587 from overwriting any existing destination file
589 dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O)
590 mode where this feature is available.
592 install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source
593 and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and
594 any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then
595 do not modify the destination at all.
597 ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too
599 stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type
603 chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics
604 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1]
606 cp uses much less memory in some situations
608 cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90),
609 doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all
611 du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before
612 processing the first file name
614 seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers
615 on systems with extended long double support and good library support.
616 Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output,
617 from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11]
619 seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number
620 to correctly print all numbers to the same width.
622 wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before
623 processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known
626 ** Changes in behavior
628 cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed.
629 Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years.
631 dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better.
632 Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result
633 in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors.
635 du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to
636 --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires
638 shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25.
640 ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.',
641 rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL
642 is still marked with a '+'.
645 * Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta]
649 timeout: Run a command with bounded time.
650 truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size.
654 chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance,
655 even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file
656 systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear
657 per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order.
658 Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement
659 from the newer version of fts in gnulib.
661 comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
662 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
664 comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification
665 of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB.
667 cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented.
669 dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks.
670 With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read,
671 until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error.
673 df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all
674 arguments after all arguments have been processed.
676 If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and
677 expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is
678 used to factor large numbers.
680 install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to
683 ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available
685 ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp)
687 md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of
688 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too.
690 sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file
691 containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used
692 instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with
693 maximum command-line (argv) length.
695 sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE
696 represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once.
697 When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files.
699 sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version),
700 specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp.
704 chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message
706 od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is
707 probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles.
709 seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",".
710 Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example.
712 shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI
714 shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation
715 previously claimed it was called --head-lines.
719 Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10,
720 HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence
721 of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs.
723 join has significantly better performance due to better memory management
725 ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format,
726 no matter how many files are in a given directory
728 od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t
729 specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from
730 padding the input out to the least common multiple width.
732 ** Changes in behavior
734 stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op.
735 Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed.
738 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable]
742 chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address
744 cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5,
745 "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the
746 permissions from the some-fifo argument.
748 id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked
749 with no USERNAME argument.
751 id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG).
752 Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs
753 was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful.
755 uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse.
756 In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero.
757 On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper
758 number of fields for some inputs.
760 tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g.,
761 "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992]
763 ** Changes in behavior
765 install once again sets SELinux context, when possible
766 [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90]
769 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable]
773 configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works.
775 "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using
776 -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail
777 with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying
778 to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90]
780 dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and
781 of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h]
783 id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in
784 much better performance when there are many users and/or groups.
786 ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version
787 of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer.
789 md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g.,
790 echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line.
791 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
792 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
794 md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..."
795 and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file,
796 and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail.
797 Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it.
798 sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too.
799 [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995]
801 "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x"
802 mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed.
804 mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename,
805 when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that.
806 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0]
808 "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2,
809 stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
811 "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap
812 [bug present in the original version, in 1992]
814 "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt
815 the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them)
816 at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F),
817 --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S).
819 "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and
820 prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192).
822 "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure
823 in more cases when a directory is empty.
825 "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted"
826 rather than reporting the invalid string format.
827 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
831 join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can
832 be turned off with the --nocheck-order option.
834 sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of
835 general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the
836 options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n
837 and --random-sort/-R, resp.
841 id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs
842 would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument.
844 ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences
846 seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats.
850 rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku,
851 which have negative errno values.
855 install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout,
859 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable]
863 Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac.
864 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92]
867 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta]
871 cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the
872 permissions of a just-created destination directory.
873 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
875 tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers
876 of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail:
877 env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'
878 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90]
882 "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds
883 whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now".
884 Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would
885 fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now".
888 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta]
892 "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given.
894 "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment
895 in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory.
896 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9]
899 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta]
903 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
904 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
906 chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file
908 mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names)
910 runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context
912 ** Programs no longer installed by default
916 ** Changes in behavior
918 cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink
919 Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior.
921 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
922 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
924 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
925 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
926 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
930 Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora:
931 * cp accepts new --preserve=context option.
932 * "cp -a" works with SELinux:
933 Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does
934 not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is
935 similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status.
936 * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option.
937 * id accepts new "-Z" option.
938 * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string
939 * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option.
940 * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext
942 The following commands and options now support the standard size
943 suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y:
944 head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C,
947 cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID
950 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
951 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
952 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
954 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
955 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
956 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
961 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
962 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
963 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
964 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
966 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
967 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
968 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
969 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
970 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
971 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
972 of "make check" fail.
974 ** Remove deprecated options
976 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
977 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
978 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
979 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
980 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
982 ** Improved robustness
984 ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link.
985 In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss.
986 For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we
987 should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f
988 However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the
989 loss of the contents of a/f.
991 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
992 in its 35-colon command-line argument
996 chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails
997 with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file.
998 [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0]
1000 cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty.
1001 Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel
1002 reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work",
1003 and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1005 cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file
1006 name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d"
1007 no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination
1008 symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links
1009 or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE,
1010 "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing
1011 nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the
1012 destination is a symlink.
1014 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
1016 "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes
1017 too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm.
1019 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
1020 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
1022 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
1024 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
1025 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
1027 date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days',
1028 in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'.
1030 du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory
1033 du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible
1034 directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory.
1036 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
1037 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
1039 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
1040 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
1041 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
1042 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1044 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
1045 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
1046 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1048 od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a
1049 nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least
1050 with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22.
1052 "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly
1053 the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number
1054 of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files,
1055 od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9]
1057 ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate
1058 no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error
1059 and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation]
1061 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
1062 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
1064 seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%,
1065 and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp.
1067 "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems
1069 Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g.,
1070 "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an
1071 invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5]
1073 sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory)
1074 no longer provokes unaligned memory access
1076 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
1077 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
1079 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
1080 complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992]
1082 tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1.
1083 [present in the original version]
1086 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
1090 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
1092 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
1093 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
1094 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
1096 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
1097 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
1099 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
1103 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
1104 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
1106 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
1107 support but with insufficient /proc support.
1109 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
1110 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
1112 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
1113 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
1114 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
1115 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
1116 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
1117 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
1119 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
1120 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
1123 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
1124 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
1126 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
1129 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
1130 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
1131 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
1133 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
1134 directory is unreadable.
1136 rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt
1137 when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes
1138 and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name.
1140 rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual
1141 conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only
1142 directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt
1143 to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced
1144 with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt
1147 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
1148 Before it would print nothing.
1150 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
1152 "rm -rf D" would emit an misleading diagnostic when failing to
1153 remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D.
1154 Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition
1155 "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives
1156 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print
1157 $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x;
1158 $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y .
1159 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory
1161 mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied.
1165 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
1166 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
1167 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
1169 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
1170 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
1171 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
1172 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
1175 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
1179 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
1180 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
1181 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
1182 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
1183 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
1184 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
1185 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1187 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
1188 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
1189 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
1190 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
1191 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
1192 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
1193 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
1194 This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
1196 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
1197 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
1198 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
1201 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
1205 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
1206 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
1208 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
1209 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
1210 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
1212 ** Improved robustness
1214 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
1215 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
1216 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
1219 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
1223 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
1224 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
1225 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
1226 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
1227 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1229 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
1233 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
1236 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
1240 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
1241 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
1242 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
1243 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
1245 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
1246 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
1248 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
1249 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
1250 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
1253 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
1255 ** Improved robustness
1257 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
1258 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
1260 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
1261 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
1262 or NFS-mounted partition.
1264 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
1265 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
1269 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
1270 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
1271 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
1272 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
1273 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
1274 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
1276 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
1277 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
1279 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
1280 or neglect to report file removal.
1282 For the "groups" command:
1284 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
1285 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
1287 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
1289 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
1291 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
1295 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
1296 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
1299 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
1301 ** Changes in behavior
1303 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
1304 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
1305 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
1306 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
1308 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
1309 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
1310 a final `./' or `../' component.
1312 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
1313 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
1314 this only for pipes.
1316 ** Infrastructure changes
1318 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
1319 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
1320 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
1321 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
1325 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
1326 name is "." or "..".
1328 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
1329 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
1330 dirent.d_type support.
1332 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
1333 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
1335 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
1336 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
1337 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
1338 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
1341 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
1343 ** Changes in behavior
1345 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
1349 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
1350 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
1354 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
1355 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
1356 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
1358 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
1359 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1361 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
1362 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
1364 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
1366 ** Improved robustness
1368 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
1369 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
1370 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
1372 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
1373 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
1376 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
1377 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
1379 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
1380 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
1382 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
1383 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
1385 ** Changes in behavior
1387 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
1388 where the two are distinct.
1390 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
1391 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
1392 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
1393 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
1394 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
1395 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
1396 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
1397 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
1398 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
1399 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
1400 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
1401 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
1402 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
1403 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
1404 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
1405 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
1406 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
1408 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
1409 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
1410 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
1412 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
1413 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
1414 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
1415 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
1418 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
1419 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
1423 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
1424 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
1425 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
1426 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
1428 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
1429 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
1430 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
1432 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
1433 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
1434 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
1435 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
1436 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
1439 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
1440 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
1442 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
1443 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
1444 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
1445 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
1447 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
1448 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
1449 successful and the output is easier to parse.
1451 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
1452 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
1453 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
1454 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
1456 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
1457 and sticky) with the -m option.
1459 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
1460 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
1461 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
1462 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
1463 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
1465 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
1466 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
1468 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
1472 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
1473 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
1474 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
1475 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
1477 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
1479 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
1481 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
1482 silently ignoring one of them.
1484 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
1485 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
1486 containing this change was 5.92.
1488 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
1489 automatically newline terminated.
1491 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
1492 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
1493 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
1494 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
1497 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
1498 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1499 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
1502 ** Scheduled for removal
1504 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
1505 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
1507 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
1508 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
1509 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
1510 command to unlink a directory.
1512 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
1513 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
1514 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
1515 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
1519 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
1520 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
1521 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
1522 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
1523 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
1524 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
1528 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
1529 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
1531 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
1533 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
1534 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
1535 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
1537 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
1538 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
1541 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
1542 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
1544 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
1545 list directories before files.
1547 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
1548 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
1549 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
1550 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
1553 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
1555 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
1557 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
1558 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
1559 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
1561 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1562 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1566 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
1567 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
1568 usually printing nothing.
1570 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
1572 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
1573 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
1574 them with hard-linked directories.
1576 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
1577 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
1578 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
1580 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
1581 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
1582 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
1584 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
1587 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
1588 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
1590 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
1591 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
1593 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
1594 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
1596 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
1597 all command-line arguments.
1599 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
1601 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
1603 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
1604 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
1606 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
1608 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
1609 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
1610 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
1611 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
1612 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
1614 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
1615 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
1617 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
1618 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
1619 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
1620 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
1622 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
1624 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
1628 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
1629 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
1631 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
1632 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
1634 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
1635 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
1637 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
1638 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
1640 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
1641 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
1643 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
1645 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
1646 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
1647 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
1650 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
1652 ** Build-related bug fixes
1654 installing .mo files would fail
1657 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
1661 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
1663 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
1666 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
1670 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
1671 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
1675 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
1677 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
1678 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
1680 ** Deprecated options
1682 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
1683 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
1685 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
1689 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
1691 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
1692 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
1693 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
1694 conforming to older POSIX versions.
1696 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
1699 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
1705 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
1710 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
1712 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
1714 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
1715 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
1716 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
1718 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
1719 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
1720 problematic usages. These include:
1722 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
1723 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
1724 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
1725 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
1726 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
1727 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
1728 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
1729 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
1730 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
1732 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
1733 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
1735 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
1736 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
1737 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
1738 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
1740 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
1741 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
1742 between binary and text files.
1744 The following programs now always use text input/output:
1748 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
1752 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
1753 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
1755 head tac tail tee tr
1756 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
1758 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
1759 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
1761 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
1762 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
1763 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
1765 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
1767 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
1769 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
1770 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
1771 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
1775 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
1777 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
1778 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
1780 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
1781 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
1782 blocks until F contains N blocks.
1786 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
1787 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
1791 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
1792 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
1793 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
1797 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
1798 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
1802 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
1804 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
1806 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
1810 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
1811 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
1812 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
1814 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
1815 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
1816 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
1817 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
1818 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
1820 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
1824 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
1825 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
1826 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
1828 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
1830 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
1831 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
1832 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
1833 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
1835 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
1837 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
1838 rather than silently wrapping around.
1840 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
1841 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
1843 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
1844 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
1846 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
1847 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
1848 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
1849 file /tmp/a/b/file".
1851 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
1853 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
1855 ** Improved robustness
1857 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
1858 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
1859 no matter how large the result.
1861 ** Improved portability
1863 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
1864 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
1866 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
1868 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
1869 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
1870 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
1872 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
1873 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
1877 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
1878 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
1880 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
1882 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
1883 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
1884 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
1885 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
1887 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
1888 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
1890 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
1891 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
1892 categories if not specified by dircolors.
1894 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
1896 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
1897 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
1899 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
1900 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
1902 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
1904 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
1905 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
1907 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
1908 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
1910 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
1911 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
1912 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
1914 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
1916 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
1918 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
1922 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
1924 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
1925 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
1926 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
1928 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
1929 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
1931 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
1932 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
1933 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
1935 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
1936 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
1938 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
1939 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
1940 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
1941 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
1943 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
1944 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
1946 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
1947 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
1948 the file system does not support it.
1950 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
1952 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
1953 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
1955 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
1957 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
1958 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
1960 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
1961 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
1962 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
1963 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
1965 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
1966 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
1969 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
1970 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
1971 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
1972 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
1974 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
1975 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
1976 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
1977 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
1979 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
1980 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
1982 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
1984 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
1985 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
1986 reporting incorrect results.
1990 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
1991 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
1993 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
1996 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
1998 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
1999 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
2001 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
2002 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
2004 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
2007 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
2008 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
2009 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
2010 the file name does not look like a page range.
2012 printf has several changes:
2014 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
2015 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
2017 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
2018 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
2019 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
2021 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
2022 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
2025 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
2026 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
2028 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
2029 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
2031 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
2033 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
2034 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
2036 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
2038 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
2040 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
2041 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
2042 when first encountering the directory.
2046 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
2047 output; POSIX requires this.
2049 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
2050 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
2052 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
2054 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
2055 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
2057 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
2058 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
2060 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
2061 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
2062 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
2063 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
2064 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
2065 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
2066 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
2068 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
2069 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
2070 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
2072 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
2073 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
2075 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
2077 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
2079 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
2080 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
2081 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
2082 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
2084 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
2088 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
2089 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
2090 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
2091 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
2092 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
2094 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
2095 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
2096 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
2098 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
2099 is longer than PATH_MAX.
2101 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
2102 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
2104 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
2105 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
2106 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
2107 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
2108 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
2110 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
2111 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
2113 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
2114 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
2116 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
2118 nocreat do not create the output file
2119 excl fail if the output file already exists
2120 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
2121 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
2123 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
2125 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
2126 direct use direct I/O for data
2127 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
2128 sync likewise, but also for metadata
2129 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
2130 nofollow do not follow symlinks
2131 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
2133 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
2135 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
2136 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
2139 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
2140 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
2141 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
2142 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
2143 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
2144 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
2146 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
2147 list of NUL-terminated file names.
2149 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
2152 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
2154 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
2156 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
2157 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
2159 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
2160 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
2161 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
2163 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
2164 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
2165 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
2167 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
2169 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
2170 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
2172 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
2173 for compatibility with bash.
2175 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
2177 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
2178 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
2179 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
2180 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
2182 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
2183 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
2185 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
2186 ls supports TABSIZE.
2187 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
2188 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
2189 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
2191 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
2194 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
2196 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
2197 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
2198 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
2199 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
2200 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
2201 an offset, not as a file name.
2203 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
2204 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
2206 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
2207 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
2209 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
2210 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
2212 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
2213 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
2214 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
2216 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
2217 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
2219 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
2220 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
2224 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
2226 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
2228 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
2232 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
2233 or more arguments between partitions.
2235 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
2236 holes in the destination.
2238 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
2239 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
2240 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
2241 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
2242 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
2243 terminates immediately.
2245 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
2247 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
2249 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
2250 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
2251 not the empty string.
2253 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
2254 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
2258 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
2259 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
2260 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
2263 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
2270 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
2274 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
2275 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
2277 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
2278 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
2280 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
2281 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
2282 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
2285 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
2289 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
2290 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
2292 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
2293 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
2295 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
2296 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
2297 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
2299 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
2301 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
2304 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
2306 ** Configuration option
2308 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
2309 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
2313 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
2314 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
2318 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
2319 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
2320 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
2323 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
2324 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
2325 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
2326 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
2327 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
2328 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2329 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2332 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
2336 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
2337 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
2338 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
2340 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
2341 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
2343 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
2345 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
2346 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
2347 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
2348 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
2350 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
2352 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
2353 not just the ones that reference directories
2355 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
2356 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
2358 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
2359 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
2360 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
2362 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
2363 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
2364 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
2365 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
2366 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
2367 ragged when a datum was too wide.
2369 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
2374 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
2375 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
2377 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
2379 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
2381 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
2383 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
2384 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
2386 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
2387 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
2389 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
2391 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
2395 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
2397 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
2399 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
2400 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
2401 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
2402 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
2403 resolution is the best we can do right now.
2405 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
2406 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
2408 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
2409 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
2411 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
2412 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
2414 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
2415 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
2416 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
2420 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
2421 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
2422 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
2423 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
2424 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
2425 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
2426 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
2427 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
2428 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
2429 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
2430 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
2431 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
2432 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2433 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
2435 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
2437 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
2438 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
2440 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
2442 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
2444 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
2445 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
2447 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
2449 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
2450 without a trailing newline.
2452 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
2453 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
2455 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
2458 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
2462 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
2464 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
2466 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
2467 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
2468 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
2469 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
2471 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
2473 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
2474 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
2475 be printed without leading spaces.
2477 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
2478 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
2483 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
2484 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
2485 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
2487 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
2489 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
2490 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
2492 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
2493 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
2495 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
2496 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
2498 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
2500 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
2502 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
2504 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
2505 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
2507 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
2509 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2511 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
2512 byte offsets are specified.
2515 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
2518 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
2521 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
2522 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
2523 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
2524 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
2525 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
2526 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
2527 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
2528 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
2529 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
2530 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
2531 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
2532 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
2533 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
2534 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
2535 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
2536 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
2537 directory where M has write access.
2538 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
2539 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
2540 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
2543 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
2544 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
2545 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
2546 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
2547 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
2548 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
2549 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
2550 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
2551 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
2552 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
2553 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
2554 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
2555 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
2556 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
2557 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
2558 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
2559 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
2560 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
2561 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
2562 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
2563 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
2564 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
2565 appeared one additional time.
2567 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
2568 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
2569 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
2570 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
2573 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
2574 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
2575 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
2576 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
2577 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
2578 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
2579 if there were more than 338.
2581 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
2582 - false --help now exits nonzero
2585 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
2586 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
2587 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
2588 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
2591 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
2592 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
2593 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
2594 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
2595 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
2598 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
2599 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
2600 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
2601 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
2602 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
2603 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
2604 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2607 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
2608 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
2609 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
2610 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
2611 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
2612 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
2614 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2615 under certain unusual conditions
2616 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
2617 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
2620 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
2621 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
2622 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
2623 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
2624 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
2625 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
2626 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
2627 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
2628 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
2629 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
2630 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
2631 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
2632 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
2633 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
2634 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
2635 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
2638 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
2639 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
2642 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
2643 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
2644 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
2645 involving hard-linked directories
2646 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
2647 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
2648 character-special and block files
2651 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
2652 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
2653 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
2654 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
2655 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
2656 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
2657 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
2658 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
2659 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
2661 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
2662 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
2663 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
2664 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
2665 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
2666 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
2667 specified on the command line.
2668 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
2669 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
2670 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
2671 the first file untouched.
2672 * readlink: new program
2673 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
2674 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
2675 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
2676 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
2677 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
2678 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
2681 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
2682 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
2683 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
2684 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
2685 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
2686 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
2687 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
2688 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
2689 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
2690 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
2691 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
2692 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
2694 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
2695 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
2696 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
2698 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
2699 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
2700 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
2701 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
2702 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
2703 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
2704 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
2705 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
2708 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
2709 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
2712 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
2713 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
2714 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
2715 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
2716 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
2717 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
2718 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
2721 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
2722 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
2724 ========================================================================
2725 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
2726 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2729 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
2731 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
2732 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
2733 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
2734 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
2735 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
2736 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
2737 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
2738 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
2739 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
2740 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
2741 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
2742 The old options will continue to work for a while.
2744 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
2745 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
2746 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
2747 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
2749 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
2752 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
2754 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
2755 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
2756 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
2757 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
2758 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
2759 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
2760 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
2763 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
2764 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
2765 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
2766 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
2767 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
2768 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
2769 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
2770 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
2771 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
2772 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
2773 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
2774 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
2775 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
2776 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
2777 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
2778 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
2780 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
2781 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
2783 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
2784 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
2785 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
2786 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
2787 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
2788 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
2790 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
2791 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
2792 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
2793 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
2794 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
2795 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
2796 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
2798 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
2799 the source files in the following example:
2800 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
2801 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
2802 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
2803 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
2804 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
2805 links between source files with --preserve=links
2806 * cp accepts new options:
2807 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
2808 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
2809 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
2810 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
2811 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
2812 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
2813 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
2814 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
2815 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
2817 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
2818 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
2819 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
2820 even though it's older than dest.
2821 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
2822 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
2823 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
2824 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
2825 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
2827 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
2828 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
2829 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
2830 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
2831 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
2832 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
2833 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
2835 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
2836 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
2837 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
2839 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
2840 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
2841 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
2842 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
2843 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
2844 This is the default.
2846 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
2847 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
2848 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
2849 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
2850 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
2852 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
2855 ========================================================================
2856 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
2857 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
2860 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
2861 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
2863 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2864 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
2865 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
2866 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
2867 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
2869 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
2870 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
2871 that specifies a non-directory
2874 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
2875 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
2876 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
2877 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
2878 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
2879 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
2880 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
2881 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
2882 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
2883 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
2884 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
2885 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
2886 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
2887 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
2888 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
2889 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
2890 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
2891 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
2892 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
2893 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
2894 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
2895 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
2896 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
2897 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
2899 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
2900 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
2901 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
2903 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
2905 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
2906 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
2908 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
2909 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
2910 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
2911 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
2912 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
2914 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
2915 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
2916 required support; from Bruno Haible.
2917 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
2918 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
2920 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
2922 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
2923 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
2924 * still more portability fixes
2925 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
2926 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2928 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
2930 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
2932 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
2934 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
2935 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
2936 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
2937 there is any time remaining
2938 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
2940 ========================================================================
2941 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
2942 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
2944 This package began as the union of the following:
2945 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
2947 ========================================================================
2949 Copyright (C) 2001-2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
2951 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
2952 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
2953 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
2954 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
2955 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
2956 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.