1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2004-03-17) [unstable]
7 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
8 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
10 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
12 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
14 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
16 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
17 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic points to, instead.
18 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
20 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
21 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
23 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
24 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
25 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
27 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
28 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
30 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
31 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
32 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
33 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
35 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
36 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
37 the file system does not support it.
39 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
40 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
41 reporting incorrect results.
43 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
45 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
46 output; POSIX requires this.
48 tail -f no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
49 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
51 For some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
52 when first encountering a directory, `rm -r' would mistakenly fail
53 to remove files under that directory.
55 If d/x is a directory and x a file, "ln x d/" now reports an error
56 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
60 If it fails to lower the nice value due to lack of permissions,
61 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
63 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current nice
64 value happens to be -1.
66 It no longer assumes that nice values range from -20 through 19.
68 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nice values to the
69 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
71 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
72 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
74 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
75 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
76 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
78 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1
80 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
81 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
82 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
83 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
85 printf has several changes:
87 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
88 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
90 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
91 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
92 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
94 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
95 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
98 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
102 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
103 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
104 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
105 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
106 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
108 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
109 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
110 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
112 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
113 is longer than PATH_MAX.
115 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
116 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
118 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
119 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
120 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
121 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
122 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
124 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
126 nocreat do not create the output file
127 excl fail if the output file already exists
128 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
129 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
131 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
133 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
134 direct use direct I/O for data
135 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
136 sync likewise, but also for metadata
137 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
138 nofollow do not follow symlinks
140 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
142 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
143 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
146 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
147 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
148 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
149 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
150 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
151 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
153 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
154 list of NUL-terminated file names.
156 `date -d' and `touch -d' now accept integer counts of seconds since
157 1970 when prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents
158 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
160 `date -d', `date -f' and `touch -d' now handle fractional time
161 stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
163 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
164 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
166 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
167 for compatibility with bash.
169 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
170 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
172 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
174 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
175 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
176 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
178 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
181 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
182 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
186 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
188 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
192 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
193 or more arguments between partitions.
195 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
196 holes in the destination.
198 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
199 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
200 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
201 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
202 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
203 terminates immediately.
205 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
207 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
209 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
210 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
211 not the empty string.
213 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
214 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
218 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
219 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
220 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
223 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
230 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
234 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
235 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
237 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
238 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
240 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
241 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
242 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
245 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
249 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
250 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
252 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
253 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
255 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
256 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
257 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
259 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
261 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
264 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
266 ** Configuration option
268 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
269 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
273 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
274 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
278 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
279 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
280 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
283 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
284 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
285 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
286 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
287 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
288 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
291 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
295 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
296 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
297 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
299 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
300 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
302 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
304 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
305 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
306 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
307 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
309 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
311 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
312 not just the ones that reference directories
314 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
315 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
317 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
318 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
319 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
321 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
322 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
323 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
324 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
325 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
326 ragged when a datum was too wide.
328 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
333 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
334 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
336 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
338 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
340 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
342 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
343 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
345 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
346 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
348 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
350 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
354 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
356 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
358 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
359 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
360 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
361 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
362 resolution is the best we can do right now.
364 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
365 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
367 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
368 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
370 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
371 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
373 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
374 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
375 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
379 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
380 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
381 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
382 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
383 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
384 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
385 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
386 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
387 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
388 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
389 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
390 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
391 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
392 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
394 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
396 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
397 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
399 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
401 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
403 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
404 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
406 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
408 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
409 without a trailing newline.
411 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
412 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
414 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
417 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
421 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
423 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
425 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
426 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
427 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
428 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
430 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
432 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
433 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
434 be printed without leading spaces.
436 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
437 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
442 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
443 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
444 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
446 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
448 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
449 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
451 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
452 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
454 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
455 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
457 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
459 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
461 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
463 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
464 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
466 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
468 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
470 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
471 byte offsets are specified.
474 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
477 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
480 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
481 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
482 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
483 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
484 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
485 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
486 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
487 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
488 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
489 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
490 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
491 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
492 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
493 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
494 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
495 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
496 directory where M has write access.
497 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
498 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
499 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
502 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
503 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
504 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
505 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
506 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
507 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
508 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
509 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
510 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
511 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
512 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
513 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
514 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
515 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
516 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
517 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
518 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
519 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
520 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
521 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
522 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
523 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
524 appeared one additional time.
526 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
527 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
528 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
529 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
532 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
533 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
534 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
535 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
536 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
537 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
538 if there were more than 338.
540 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
541 - false --help now exits nonzero
544 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
545 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
546 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
547 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
550 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
551 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
552 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
553 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
554 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
557 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
558 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
559 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
560 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
561 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
562 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
563 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
566 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
567 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
568 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
569 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
570 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
571 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
573 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
574 under certain unusual conditions
575 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
576 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
579 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
580 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
581 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
582 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
583 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
584 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
585 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
586 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
587 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
588 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
589 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
590 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
591 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
592 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
593 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
594 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
597 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
598 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
601 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
602 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
603 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
604 involving hard-linked directories
605 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
606 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
607 character-special and block files
610 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
611 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
612 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
613 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
614 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
615 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
616 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
617 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
618 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
620 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
621 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
622 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
623 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
624 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
625 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
626 specified on the command line.
627 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
628 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
629 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
630 the first file untouched.
631 * readlink: new program
632 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
633 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
634 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
635 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
636 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
637 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
640 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
641 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
642 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
643 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
644 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
645 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
646 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
647 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
648 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
649 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
650 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
651 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
653 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
654 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
655 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
657 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
658 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
659 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
660 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
661 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
662 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
663 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
664 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
667 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
668 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
671 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
672 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
673 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
674 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
675 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
676 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
677 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
680 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
681 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
683 ========================================================================
684 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
685 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
688 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
690 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
691 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
692 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
693 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
694 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
695 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
696 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
697 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
698 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
699 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
700 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
701 The old options will continue to work for a while.
703 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
704 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
705 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
706 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
708 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
711 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
713 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
714 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
715 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
716 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
717 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
718 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
719 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
722 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
723 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
724 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
725 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
726 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
727 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
728 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
729 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
730 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
731 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
732 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
733 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
734 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
735 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
736 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
737 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
739 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
740 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
742 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
743 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
744 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
745 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
746 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
747 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
749 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
750 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
751 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
752 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
753 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
754 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
755 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
757 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
758 the source files in the following example:
759 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
760 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
761 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
762 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
763 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
764 links between source files with --preserve=links
765 * cp accepts new options:
766 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
767 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
768 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
769 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
770 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
771 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
772 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
773 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
774 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
776 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
777 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
778 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
779 even though it's older than dest.
780 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
781 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
782 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
783 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
784 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
786 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
787 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
788 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
789 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
790 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
791 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
792 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
794 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
795 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
796 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
798 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
799 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
800 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
801 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
802 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
805 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
806 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
807 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
808 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
809 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
811 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
814 ========================================================================
815 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
816 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
819 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
820 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
822 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
823 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
824 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
825 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
826 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
828 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
829 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
830 that specifies a non-directory
833 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
834 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
835 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
836 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
837 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
838 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
839 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
840 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
841 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
842 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
843 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
844 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
845 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
846 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
847 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
848 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
849 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
850 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
851 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
852 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
853 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
854 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
855 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
856 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
858 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
859 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
860 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
862 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
864 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
865 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
867 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
868 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
869 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
870 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
871 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
873 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
874 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
875 required support; from Bruno Haible.
876 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
877 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
879 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
881 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
882 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
883 * still more portability fixes
884 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
885 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
887 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
889 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
891 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
893 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
894 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
895 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
896 there is any time remaining
897 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
899 ========================================================================
900 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
901 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
903 This package began as the union of the following:
904 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.