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coreutils/NEWS
Jim Meyering dba603f83a Mention the `mkdir -p' bug fix.
2005-10-16 10:24:41 +00:00

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GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
* Major changes in release 5.91-cvs (2005-10-16) [stable candidate]
** Bug fixes
"mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
** Removed options
tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
Use --dereference (-L) instead.
** Deprecated options
Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
Use -m instead.
* Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
conforming to older POSIX versions.
The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
date -I
expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
fold -WIDTH
head -NUM
join -j FIELD
join -j1 FIELD
join -j2 FIELD
join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
nice -NUM
od -w
pr -S
split -NUM
tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
problematic usages. These include:
Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
(*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
"Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
between binary and text files.
The following programs now always use text input/output:
expand unexpand
The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
cp install mv shred
The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
head tac tail tee tr
(cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
binary if they actually read them in text mode.
** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
dd changes:
On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
blocks until F contains N blocks.
fold changes:
When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
"fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
ls changes:
-p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
--indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
--indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
nice changes:
Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
nohup changes:
nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
pathchk changes:
It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
"pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
<http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
<http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
** Bug fixes
chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
rather than silently wrapping around.
ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
"mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
"mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
file /tmp/a/b/file".
"pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
** Improved robustness
Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
no matter how large the result.
** Improved portability
hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
`rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
** New features
chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
categories if not specified by dircolors.
du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
when none of the listed files has an ACL.
md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
"rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
"-FOO" is not a valid option.
stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
"touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
* Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
** Bug fixes
Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
Do not affect symbolic links by default.
Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
--dereference now works, even when the specified owner
and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
are both used, then -P must be in effect.
-H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
"chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
the file system does not support it.
chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
"`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
chown, chmod, and chgrp.
du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
final component.
echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
"ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
reporting incorrect results.
Fixes for "nice":
If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
happens to be -1.
It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
`pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
either -s or -w.
pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
the file name does not look like a page range.
printf has several changes:
It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
(this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
printf function.
ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
"rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
when first encountering the directory.
"sort" fixes:
"sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
output; POSIX requires this.
An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
"sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
/proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
"tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
"touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
"touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
** New features
For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
is longer than PATH_MAX.
cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
selected bytes, characters, or fields.
dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
nocreat do not create the output file
excl fail if the output file already exists
fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
fsync likewise, but also write metadata
dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
direct use direct I/O for data
dsync use synchronized I/O for data
sync likewise, but also for metadata
nonblock use non-blocking I/O
nofollow do not follow symlinks
noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
string.
'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
list of NUL-terminated file names.
Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
changed as follows:
Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
"UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
`date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
for compatibility with bash.
ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
--ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
"ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
ls supports TABSIZE.
pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
printf supports \u, \U, \x.
tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
pwd, sync, and yes.
`od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
an offset, not as a file name.
-h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
Use -x or -t x2 instead.
-i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
-l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
-s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
** Removed features
md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
* Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
** Bug fixes
mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
or more arguments between partitions.
`cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
holes in the destination.
nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
terminates immediately.
`expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
not the empty string.
The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
`expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
** New features
`chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
* Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
** Bug fixes
none
* Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
** Bug fixes
`cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
misbehaving.
* Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
** Bug fixes
rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
with status 0 when given more than one argument.
nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
* Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
** Configuration option
You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
** Bug fixes
fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
** New features
touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
'-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
before FOO's.
join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
"-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
"-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
[This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
* Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
** New features
chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
--preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
not just the ones that reference directories
du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
(--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
ragged when a datum was too wide.
du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
output lines
** Bug fixes
printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
(potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
* Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
** New features
date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
resolution is the best we can do right now.
sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
`sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
** Bug fixes
Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
*** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
(B may well have a link count larger than 1)
2) B and b are hard links to the same file
stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
`split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
`df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
without a trailing newline.
`tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
* Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
** New features
sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
`test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
`test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
`test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
`[ --help' and `[ --version'.
`test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
be printed without leading spaces.
Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
has been removed.
** Bug fixes
kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
`[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
`sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
`su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
** Fewer arbitrary limitations
cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
byte offsets are specified.
* Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
** New programs
- new program: `[' (much like `test')
** New features
- head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
- md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
- date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
- chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
- chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
directory where M has write access.
2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
** Bug fixes
- chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
- `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
- split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
- tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
- du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
- df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
non-glibc, non-solaris systems
- `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
- readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
- mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
- date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
- date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
- fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
- fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
- tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
appeared one additional time.
** Fewer arbitrary limitations
- tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
- split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
** Portability
- `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
- stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
- sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
- rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
if there were more than 338.
* Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
- false --help now exits nonzero
[4.5.12]
* printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
* printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
* printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
* printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
[4.5.11]
* seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
* seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
* seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
* df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
* portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
[4.5.10]
* printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
* shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
* du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
* du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
* portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
* du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
[4.5.9]
* du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
* work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
* `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
is inaccessible.
* rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
under certain unusual conditions
* mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
[4.5.8]
* du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
* stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
* du accepts new option: --apparent-size
* du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
* du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
* df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
`df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
/dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
* test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
`test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
[4.5.7]
* du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
[4.5.6]
* du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
* du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
* du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
involving hard-linked directories
* `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
* df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
character-special and block files
[4.5.5]
* ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
* du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
* du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
* du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
* rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
* ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
has been specified.
* ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
* ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
* Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
specified on the command line.
* shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
the first file untouched.
* readlink: new program
* cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
* rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
* when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
[4.5.4]
* cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
* `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
* ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
* stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
* `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
* `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
* In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
* printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
* The following features have been added to the --block-size option
and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
- A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
For example:
$ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
-rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
- A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
For example:
$ ls -l --block-size="K"
-rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
* ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
* df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
* nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
[4.5.3]
* du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
* `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
[4.5.2]
* `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
* `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
* `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
* rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
* printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
* od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
* tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
[4.5.1]
* du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
* uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
========================================================================
Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
[4.1.11]
* `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
[4.1.10]
* rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
* df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
* New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
* Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
* The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
* `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
* stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
* stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
The old options will continue to work for a while.
[4.1.9]
* rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
* new programs: link, unlink, and stat
* New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
* `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
[4.1.8]
* mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
that aren't moved
[4.1.7]
* rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
[4.1.6]
* New cp option: --copy-contents.
* cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
* ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
* The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
* cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
unusual cases
[4.1.5]
* cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
* The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
* -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
* Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
* New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
* You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
* The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
[4.1.4]
* df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
* dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
[4.1.3]
* ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
* dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
[4.1.2]
* cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
* chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
[4.1.1]
* mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
the source files in the following example:
rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
* ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
* cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
Use --parents to get the old meaning.
* When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
links between source files with --preserve=links
* cp accepts new options:
--preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
--no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
* cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
* mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
* remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
64-bit systems)
* mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
* mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
even though it's older than dest.
* chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
* cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
* `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
* ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
than 8 characters.
* ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
* ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
* ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
* ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
* ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
- The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
`2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
- The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
and '05-14 23:45'.
- The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
- The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
This is the default.
You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
* --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
========================================================================
Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
[2.0.15]
* date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
* fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
[2.0.14]
* nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
- nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
- nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
- nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
[2.0.13]
* uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
* pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
that specifies a non-directory
[2.0.12]
* kill: new program
* who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
--process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
* The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
- `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
- `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
[This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
* New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
* 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
* 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
* date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
(e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
* factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
[2.0.11]
* setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
* `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
* some DOS/Windows portability changes
[2.0j]
* `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
[2.0i]
* fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
`write error' when invoked with the --version option
[2.0h]
* all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
* printf exits nonzero upon write failure
* yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
* date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
* portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
[2.0g]
* date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
* printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
required support; from Bruno Haible.
* stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
* seq's --equal-width option works more portably
[2.0f]
* fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
[2.0e]
* stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
* still more portability fixes
* unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
[2.0d]
* fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
[2.0c]
* fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
[2.0b]
* Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
[2.0a]
* sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
* sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
* when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
there is any time remaining
* who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
========================================================================
For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
This package began as the union of the following:
textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
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