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Diffstat (limited to 'NEWS')
| -rw-r--r-- | NEWS | 2902 |
1 files changed, 2761 insertions, 141 deletions
@@ -1,5 +1,2605 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.25 (2016-01-20) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + cp now correctly copies files with a hole at the end of the file, + and extents allocated beyond the apparent size of the file. + That combination resulted in the trailing hole not being reproduced. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10] + + cut --fields no longer outputs extraneous characters on some uClibc configs. + [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11] + + install -D again copies relative file names when absolute file names + are also specified along with an absolute destination directory name. + [bug introduced in coreutils-6.2] + + ls no longer prematurely wraps lines when printing short file names. + [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0] + + mv no longer causes data loss due to removing a source directory specified + multiple times, when that directory is also specified as the destination. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.24] + + shred again uses defined patterns for all iteration counts. + [bug introduced in coreutils-5.93] + + sort --debug -b now correctly marks the matching extents for keys + that specify an offset for the first field. + [bug introduced with the --debug feature in coreutils-8.6] + + tail -F now works with initially non existent files on a remote file system. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5] + +** New commands + + base32 is added to complement the existing base64 command, + and encodes and decodes printable text as per RFC 4648. + +** New features + + comm,cut,head,numfmt,paste,tail now have the -z,--zero-terminated option, and + tac --separator accepts an empty argument, to work with NUL delimited items. + + dd now summarizes sizes in --human-readable format too, not just --si. + E.g., "3441325000 bytes (3.4 GB, 3.2 GiB) copied". It omits the summaries + if they would not provide useful information, e.g., "3 bytes copied". + Its status=progress output now uses the same format as ordinary status, + perhaps with trailing spaces to erase previous progress output. + + md5sum now supports the --ignore-missing option to allow + verifying a subset of files given a larger list of checksums. + This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha256sum, sha384sum and sha512sum. + + printf now supports the '%q' format to print arguments in a form that + is reusable by most shells, with non-printable characters escaped + with the POSIX proposed $'...' syntax. + + stty now supports the "[-]drain" setting to control whether to wait + for transmission of pending output before application of settings. + +** Changes in behavior + + base64 no longer supports hex or oct --wrap parameters, + thus better supporting decimals with leading zeros. + + date --iso-8601 now uses +00:00 timezone format rather than +0000. + The standard states to use this "extended" format throughout a timestamp. + + df now prefers sources towards the root of a device when + eliding duplicate bind mounted entries. + + ls now quotes file names unambiguously and appropriate for use in a shell, + when outputting to a terminal. + + join, sort, uniq with --zero-terminated, now treat '\n' as a field delimiter. + +** Improvements + + All utilities now quote user supplied arguments in error strings, + which avoids confusing error messages in the presence of '\r' chars etc. + + Utilities that traverse directories, like chmod, cp, and rm etc., will operate + more efficiently on XFS through the use of "leaf optimization". + + md5sum now ensures a single line per file for status on standard output, + by using a '\' at the start of the line, and replacing any newlines with '\n'. + This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha256sum, sha384sum and sha512sum. + + dircolors now supports globbing of TERM entries in its database. + For example "TERM *256color*" is now supported. + + du no longer stats all mount points at startup, only doing so + upon detection of a directory cycle. + [issue introduced in coreutils-8.20] + + ls -w0 is now interpreted as no limit on the length of the outputted line. + + stat -f --format=%T now reports the file system type for new Linux + pseudo file systems "bpf_fs", "btrfs_test", "nsfs", "overlayfs" + and "tracefs", and remote file system "acfs". + + wc now ensures a single line per file for counts on standard output, + by quoting names containing '\n' characters; appropriate for use in a shell. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.24 (2015-07-03) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + dd supports more robust SIGINFO/SIGUSR1 handling for outputting statistics. + Previously those signals may have inadvertently terminated the process. + + df --local no longer hangs with inaccessible remote mounts. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.21] + + du now silently ignores all directory cycles due to bind mounts. + Previously it would issue a warning and exit with a failure status. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1 and partially fixed in coreutils-8.23] + + chroot again calls chroot(DIR) and chdir("/"), even if DIR is "/". + This handles separate bind mounted "/" trees, and environments + depending on the implicit chdir("/"). + [bugs introduced in coreutils-8.23] + + cp no longer issues an incorrect warning about directory hardlinks when a + source directory is specified multiple times. Now, consistent with other + file types, a warning is issued for source directories with duplicate names, + or with -H the directory is copied again using the symlink name. + + factor avoids writing partial lines, thus supporting parallel operation. + [the bug dates back to the initial implementation] + + head, od, split, tac, tail, and wc no longer mishandle input from files in + /proc and /sys file systems that report somewhat-incorrect file sizes. + + mkdir --parents -Z now correctly sets the context for the last component, + even if the parent directory exists and has a different default context. + [bug introduced with the -Z restorecon functionality in coreutils-8.22] + + numfmt no longer outputs incorrect overflowed values seen with certain + large numbers, or with numbers with increased precision. + [bug introduced when numfmt was added in coreutils-8.21] + + numfmt now handles leading zeros correctly, not counting them when + settings processing limits, and making them optional with floating point. + [bug introduced when numfmt was added in coreutils-8.21] + + paste no longer truncates output for large input files. This would happen + for example with files larger than 4GiB on 32 bit systems with a '\n' + character at the 4GiB position. + [the bug dates back to the initial implementation] + + rm indicates the correct number of arguments in its confirmation prompt, + on all platforms. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.22] + + shuf -i with a single redundant operand, would crash instead of issuing + a diagnostic. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.22] + + tail releases inotify resources when unused. Previously it could exhaust + resources with many files, or with -F if files were replaced many times. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5] + + tail -f again follows changes to a file after it's renamed. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5] + + tail --follow no longer misses changes to files if those files were + replaced before inotify watches were created. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5] + + tail --follow consistently outputs all data for a truncated file. + [bug introduced in the beginning] + + tail --follow=name correctly outputs headers for multiple files + when those files are being created or renamed. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5] + +** New features + + chroot accepts the new --skip-chdir option to not change the working directory + to "/" after changing into the chroot(2) jail, thus retaining the current wor- + king directory. The new option is only permitted if the new root directory is + the old "/", and therefore is useful with the --group and --userspec options. + + dd accepts a new status=progress level to print data transfer statistics + on stderr approximately every second. + + numfmt can now process multiple fields with field range specifications similar + to cut, and supports setting the output precision with the --format option. + + split accepts a new --separator option to select a record separator character + other than the default newline character. + + stty allows setting the "extproc" option where supported, which is + a useful setting with high latency links. + + sync no longer ignores arguments, and syncs each specified file, or with the + --file-system option, the file systems associated with each specified file. + + tee accepts a new --output-error option to control operation with pipes + and output errors in general. + +** Changes in behavior + + df no longer suppresses separate exports of the same remote device, as + these are generally explicitly mounted. The --total option does still + suppress duplicate remote file systems. + [suppression was introduced in coreutils-8.21] + + mv no longer supports moving a file to a hardlink, instead issuing an error. + The implementation was susceptible to races in the presence of multiple mv + instances, which could result in both hardlinks being deleted. Also on case + insensitive file systems like HFS, mv would just remove a hardlinked 'file' + if called like `mv file File`. The feature was added in coreutils-5.0.1. + + numfmt --from-unit and --to-unit options now interpret suffixes as SI units, + and IEC (power of 2) units are now specified by appending 'i'. + + tee will exit early if there are no more writable outputs. + + tee does not treat the file operand '-' as meaning standard output any longer, + for better conformance to POSIX. This feature was added in coreutils-5.3.0. + + timeout --foreground no longer sends SIGCONT to the monitored process, + which was seen to cause intermittent issues with GDB for example. + +** Improvements + + cp,install,mv will convert smaller runs of NULs in the input to holes, + and cp --sparse=always avoids speculative preallocation on XFS for example. + + cp will read sparse files more efficiently when the destination is a + non regular file. For example when copying a disk image to a device node. + + mv will try a reflink before falling back to a standard copy, which is + more efficient when moving files across BTRFS subvolume boundaries. + + stat and tail now know about IBRIX. stat -f --format=%T now reports the file + system type, and tail -f uses polling for files on IBRIX file systems. + + wc -l processes short lines much more efficiently. + + References from --help and the man pages of utilities have been corrected + in various cases, and more direct links to the corresponding online + documentation are provided. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.23 (2014-07-18) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + chmod -Rc no longer issues erroneous warnings for files with special bits set. + [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0] + + cp -a, mv, and install --preserve-context, once again set the correct SELinux + context for existing directories in the destination. Previously they set + the context of an existing directory to that of its last copied descendant. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.22] + + cp -a, mv, and install --preserve-context, no longer seg fault when running + with SELinux enabled, when copying from file systems that return an error + when reading the SELinux context for a file. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.22] + + cp -a and mv now preserve xattrs of symlinks copied across file systems. + [bug introduced with extended attribute preservation feature in coreutils-7.1] + + date could crash or go into an infinite loop when parsing a malformed TZ="". + [bug introduced with the --date='TZ="" ..' parsing feature in coreutils-5.3.0] + + dd's ASCII and EBCDIC conversions were incompatible with common practice and + with POSIX, and have been corrected as follows. First, conv=ascii now + implies conv=unblock, and conv=ebcdic and conv=ibm now imply conv=block. + Second, the translation tables for dd conv=ascii and conv=ebcdic have been + corrected as shown in the following table, where A is the ASCII value, W is + the old, wrong EBCDIC value, and E is the new, corrected EBCDIC value; all + values are in octal. + + A W E + 041 117 132 + 133 112 255 + 135 132 275 + 136 137 232 + 174 152 117 + 176 241 137 + 313 232 152 + 325 255 112 + 345 275 241 + + [These dd bugs were present in "the beginning".] + + df has more fixes related to the newer dynamic representation of file systems: + Duplicates are elided for virtual file systems like tmpfs. + Details for the correct device are output for points mounted multiple times. + Placeholder values are output for inaccessible file systems, rather than + than error messages or values for the wrong file system. + [These bugs were present in "the beginning".] + + df now outputs all appropriate entries in the presence of bind mounts. + On some systems, entries would have been incorrectly elided due to + them being considered "dummy" mounts. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.22] + + du now silently ignores directory cycles introduced with bind mounts. + Previously it would issue a warning and exit with a failure status. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1] + + head --bytes=-N and --lines=-N now handles devices more + consistently, not ignoring data from virtual devices like /dev/zero, + or on BSD systems data from tty devices. + [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0.1] + + head --bytes=-N - no longer fails with a bogus diagnostic when stdin's + seek pointer is not at the beginning. + [bug introduced with the --bytes=-N feature in coreutils-5.0.1] + + head --lines=-0, when the input does not contain a trailing '\n', + now copies all input to stdout. Previously nothing was output in this case. + [bug introduced with the --lines=-N feature in coreutils-5.0.1] + + id, when invoked with no user name argument, now prints the correct group ID. + Previously, in the default output format, it would print the default group ID + in the password database, which may be neither real nor effective. For e.g., + when run set-GID, or when the database changes outside the current session. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1] + + ln -sf now replaces symbolic links whose targets can't exist. Previously + it would display an error, requiring --no-dereference to avoid the issue. + [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0] + + ln -sr '' F no longer segfaults. Now works as expected. + [bug introduced with the --relative feature in coreutils-8.16] + + numfmt now handles blanks correctly in all unibyte locales. Previously + in locales where character 0xA0 is a blank, numfmt would mishandle it. + [bug introduced when numfmt was added in coreutils-8.21] + + ptx --format long option parsing no longer falls through into the --help case. + [bug introduced in TEXTUTILS-1_22i] + + ptx now consistently trims whitespace when processing multiple files. + [This bug was present in "the beginning".] + + seq again generates correct output with start or end values = -0. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20.] + + shuf --repeat no longer dumps core if the input is empty. + [bug introduced with the --repeat feature in coreutils-8.22] + + sort when using multiple threads now avoids undefined behavior with mutex + destruction, which could cause deadlocks on some implementations. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6] + + tail -f now uses polling mode for VXFS to cater for its clustered mode. + [bug introduced with inotify support added in coreutils-7.5] + +** New features + + od accepts a new option: --endian=TYPE to handle inputs with different byte + orders, or to provide consistent output on systems with disparate endianness. + + configure accepts the new option --enable-single-binary to build all the + selected programs in a single binary called "coreutils". The selected + programs can still be called directly using symlinks to "coreutils" or + shebangs with the option --coreutils-prog= passed to this program. The + install behavior is determined by the option --enable-single-binary=symlinks + or --enable-single-binary=shebangs (the default). With the symlinks option, + you can't make a second symlink to any program because that will change the + name of the called program, which is used by coreutils to determine the + desired program. The shebangs option doesn't suffer from this problem, but + the /proc/$pid/cmdline file might not be updated on all the platforms. The + functionality of each program is not affected but this single binary will + depend on all the required dynamic libraries even to run simple programs. + If you desire to build some tools outside the single binary file, you can + pass the option --enable-single-binary-exceptions=PROG_LIST with the comma + separated list of programs you want to build separately. This flag + considerably reduces the overall size of the installed binaries which makes + it suitable for embedded system. + +** Changes in behavior + + chroot with an argument of "/" no longer implicitly changes the current + directory to "/", allowing changing only user credentials for a command. + + chroot --userspec will now unset supplemental groups associated with root, + and instead use the supplemental groups of the specified user. + + cut -d$'\n' again outputs lines identified in the --fields list, having + not done so in v8.21 and v8.22. Note using this non portable functionality + will result in the delayed output of lines. + + ls with none of LS_COLORS or COLORTERM environment variables set, + will now honor an empty or unknown TERM environment variable, + and not output colors even with --colors=always. + +** Improvements + + chroot has better --userspec and --group look-ups, with numeric IDs never + causing name look-up errors. Also look-ups are first done outside the chroot, + in case the look-up within the chroot fails due to library conflicts etc. + + install now allows the combination of the -D and -t options. + + numfmt supports zero padding of numbers using the standard printf + syntax of a leading zero, for example --format="%010f". + Also throughput was improved by up to 800% by avoiding redundant processing. + + shred now supports multiple passes on GNU/Linux tape devices by rewinding + the tape before each pass, avoids redundant writes to empty files, + uses direct I/O for all passes where possible, and attempts to clear + inode storage used for small files on some file systems. + + split avoids unnecessary input buffering, immediately writing input to output + which is significant with --filter or when writing to fifos or stdout etc. + + stat and tail work better with HFS+, HFSX, LogFS and ConfigFS. stat -f + --format=%T now reports the file system type, and tail -f now uses inotify, + rather than the default of issuing a warning and reverting to polling. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.22 (2013-12-13) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + df now processes the mount list correctly in the presence of unstatable + mount points. Previously it may have failed to output some mount points. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.21] + + df now processes symbolic links and relative paths to special files containing + a mounted file system correctly. Previously df displayed the statistics about + the file system the file is stored on rather than the one inside. + [This bug was present in "the beginning".] + + df now processes disk device nodes correctly in the presence of bind mounts. + Now df shows the base mounted file system rather than the last one mounted. + [This bug was present in "the beginning".] + + install now removes the target file if the strip program failed for any + reason. Before, that file was left behind, sometimes even with wrong + permissions. + [This bug was present in "the beginning".] + + ln --relative now updates existing symlinks correctly. Previously it based + the relative link on the dereferenced path of an existing link. + [This bug was introduced when --relative was added in coreutils-8.16.] + + ls --recursive will no longer exit with "serious" exit code (2), if there + is an error reading a directory not specified on the command line. + [Bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0] + + mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod now work better when creating a file in a directory + with a default ACL whose umask disagrees with the process's umask, on a + system such as GNU/Linux where directory ACL umasks override process umasks. + [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0] + + mv will now replace empty directories in the destination with directories + from the source, when copying across file systems. + [This bug was present in "the beginning".] + + od -wN with N larger than 64K on a system with 32-bit size_t would + print approximately 2*N bytes of extraneous padding. + [Bug introduced in coreutils-7.0] + + rm -I now prompts for confirmation before removing a write protected file. + [Bug introduced in coreutils-6.8] + + shred once again uses direct I/O on systems requiring aligned buffers. + Also direct I/O failures for odd sized writes at end of file are now handled. + [The "last write" bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0 but masked + by the alignment bug introduced in coreutils-6.0] + + tail --retry -f now waits for the files specified to appear. Before, tail + would immediately exit when such a file is initially inaccessible. + [This bug was introduced when inotify support was added in coreutils-7.5] + + tail -F has improved handling of symlinks. Previously tail didn't respond + to the symlink target (re)appearing after being (re)created. + [This bug was introduced when inotify support was added in coreutils-7.5] + +** New features + + cp, install, mkdir, mknod, mkfifo and mv now support "restorecon" + functionality through the -Z option, to set the SELinux context + appropriate for the new item location in the file system. + + csplit accepts a new option: --suppressed-matched, to elide the lines + used to identify the split points. + + df --output now accepts a 'file' field, to propagate a specified + command line argument through to the output. + + du accepts a new option: --inodes to show the number of inodes instead + of the blocks used. + + id accepts a new option: --zero (-z) to delimit the output entries by + a NUL instead of a white space character. + + id and ls with -Z report the SMACK security context where available. + mkdir, mkfifo and mknod with --context set the SMACK context where available. + + id can now lookup by user ID, in addition to the existing name lookup. + + join accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort,uniq + option of the same name, this makes join consume and produce NUL-terminated + lines rather than newline-terminated lines. + + uniq accepts a new option: --group to print all items, while separating + unique groups with empty lines. + + shred accepts new parameters to the --remove option to give greater + control over that operation, which can greatly reduce sync overhead. + + shuf accepts a new option: --repeat (-r), which can repeat items in + the output. + +** Changes in behavior + + cp --link now dereferences a symbolic link as source before creating the + hard link in the destination unless the -P,--no-deref option is specified. + Previously, it would create a hard link of the symbolic link, even when + the dereferencing options -L or -H were specified. + + cp, install, mkdir, mknod and mkfifo no longer accept an argument to the + short -Z option. The --context equivalent still takes an optional argument. + + dd status=none now suppresses all non fatal diagnostic messages, + not just the transfer counts. + + df no longer accepts the long-obsolescent --megabytes option. + + stdbuf now requires at least one buffering mode option to be specified, + as per the documented interface. + +** Improvements + + base64 encoding throughput for bulk data is increased by about 60%. + + md5sum can use libcrypto hash routines where allowed to potentially + get better performance through using more system specific logic. + sha1sum for example has improved throughput by 40% on an i3-2310M. + This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha256sum, sha384sum and sha512sum. + + stat and tail work better with EFIVARFS, EXOFS, F2FS, HOSTFS, SMACKFS, SNFS + and UBIFS. stat -f --format=%T now reports the file system type, and tail -f + now uses inotify for files on all those except SNFS, rather than the default + (for unknown file system types) of issuing a warning and reverting to polling. + + shuf outputs subsets of large inputs much more efficiently. + Reservoir sampling is used to limit memory usage based on the number of + outputs, rather than the number of inputs. + + shred increases the default write block size from 12KiB to 64KiB + to align with other utilities and reduce the system call overhead. + + split --line-bytes=SIZE, now only allocates memory as needed rather + than allocating SIZE bytes at program start. + + stty now supports configuring "stick" (mark/space) parity where available. + +** Build-related + + factor now builds on aarch64 based systems [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20] + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.21 (2013-02-14) [stable] + +** New programs + + numfmt: reformat numbers + +** New features + + df now accepts the --output[=FIELD_LIST] option to define the list of columns + to include in the output, or all available columns if the FIELD_LIST is + omitted. Note this enables df to output both block and inode fields together. + + du now accepts the --threshold=SIZE option to restrict the output to entries + with such a minimum SIZE (or a maximum SIZE if it is negative). + du recognizes -t SIZE as equivalent, for compatibility with FreeBSD. + + timeout now accepts the --preserve-status option to always propagate the exit + status, useful for commands that can run for an indeterminate amount of time. + +** Bug fixes + + cp --no-preserve=mode now no longer exits non-zero. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20] + + cut with a range like "N-" no longer allocates N/8 bytes. That buffer + would never be used, and allocation failure could cause cut to fail. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10] + + cut no longer accepts the invalid range 0-, which made it print empty lines. + Instead, cut now fails and emits an appropriate diagnostic. + [This bug was present in "the beginning".] + + cut now handles overlapping to-EOL ranges properly. Before, it would + interpret "-b2-,3-" like "-b3-". Now it's treated like "-b2-". + [This bug was present in "the beginning".] + + cut no longer prints extraneous delimiters when a to-EOL range subsumes + another range. Before, "echo 123|cut --output-delim=: -b2-,3" would print + "2:3". Now it prints "23". [bug introduced in 5.3.0] + + cut -f no longer inspects input line N+1 before fully outputting line N, + which avoids delayed output for intermittent input. + [bug introduced in TEXTUTILS-1_8b] + + factor no longer loops infinitely on 32 bit powerpc or sparc systems. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20] + + install -m M SOURCE DEST no longer has a race condition where DEST's + permissions are temporarily derived from SOURCE instead of from M. + + pr -n no longer crashes when passed values >= 32. Also, line numbers are + consistently padded with spaces, rather than with zeros for certain widths. + [bug introduced in TEXTUTILS-1_22i] + + seq -w ensures that for numbers input in scientific notation, + the output numbers are properly aligned and of the correct width. + [This bug was present in "the beginning".] + + seq -w ensures correct alignment when the step value includes a precision + while the start value does not, and the number sequence narrows. + [This bug was present in "the beginning".] + + seq -s no longer prints an erroneous newline after the first number, and + outputs a newline after the last number rather than a trailing separator. + Also seq no longer ignores a specified step value when the end value is 1. + [bugs introduced in coreutils-8.20] + + timeout now ensures that blocking of ALRM signals is not inherited from + its parent, which would cause timeouts to be ignored. + [the bug dates back to the initial implementation] + +** Changes in behavior + + df --total now prints '-' into the target column (mount point) of the + summary line, accommodating the --output option where the target field + can be in any column. If there is no source column, then df prints + 'total' in the target column. + + df now properly outputs file system information with bind mounts present on + the system by skipping duplicate entries (identified by the device number). + Consequently, df also elides the early-boot pseudo file system type "rootfs". + + cut -d$'\n' no longer outputs lines identified in the --fields list, + to align with other implementations and to avoid delayed output of lines. + + nl no longer supports the --page-increment option, which has been + deprecated since coreutils-7.5. Use --line-increment instead. + +** Improvements + + readlink now supports multiple arguments, and a complementary + -z, --zero option to delimit output items with the NUL character. + + stat and tail now know about CEPH. stat -f --format=%T now reports the file + system type, and tail -f uses polling for files on CEPH file systems. + + stty now supports configuring DTR/DSR hardware flow control where available. + +** Build-related + + Perl is now more of a prerequisite. It has long been required in order + to run (not skip) a significant percentage of the tests. Now, it is + also required in order to generate proper man pages, via help2man. The + generated man/*.1 man pages are no longer distributed. Building without + perl, you would create stub man pages. Thus, while perl is not an + official prerequisite (build and "make check" will still succeed), any + resulting man pages would be inferior. In addition, this fixes a bug + in distributed (not from clone) Makefile.in that could cause parallel + build failure when building from modified sources, as is common practice + for a patched distribution package. + + factor now builds on x86_64 with x32 ABI, 32 bit MIPS, and all HPPA systems, + by avoiding incompatible asm. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20] + + A root-only test predicate would always fail. Its job was to determine + whether our dummy user, $NON_ROOT_USERNAME, was able to run binaries from + the build directory. As a result, all dependent tests were always skipped. + Now, those tests may be run once again. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.20] + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.20 (2012-10-23) [stable] + +** New features + + dd now accepts 'status=none' to suppress all informational output. + + md5sum now accepts the --tag option to print BSD-style output with GNU + file name escaping. This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha256sum, + sha384sum and sha512sum. + +** Bug fixes + + cp could read from freed memory and could even make corrupt copies. + This could happen with a very fragmented and sparse input file, + on GNU/Linux file systems supporting fiemap extent scanning. + This bug also affects mv when it resorts to copying, and install. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.11] + + cp --no-preserve=mode now no longer preserves the original file's + permissions but correctly sets mode specified by 0666 & ~umask + + du no longer emits a "disk-corrupted"-style diagnostic when it detects + a directory cycle that is due to a bind-mounted directory. Instead, + it detects this precise type of cycle, diagnoses it as such and + eventually exits nonzero. + + factor (when using gmp) would mistakenly declare some composite numbers + to be prime, e.g., 465658903, 2242724851, 6635692801 and many more. + The fix makes factor somewhat slower (~25%) for ranges of consecutive + numbers, and up to 8 times slower for some worst-case individual numbers. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0, with GNU MP support] + + ls now correctly colors dangling symlinks when listing their containing + directories, with orphaned symlink coloring disabled in LS_COLORS. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.14] + + rm -i -d now prompts the user then removes an empty directory, rather + than ignoring the -d option and failing with an 'Is a directory' error. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.19, with the addition of --dir (-d)] + + rm -r S/ (where S is a symlink-to-directory) no longer gives the invalid + "Too many levels of symbolic links" diagnostic. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6] + + seq now handles arbitrarily long non-negative whole numbers when the + increment is 1 and when no format-changing option is specified. + Before, this would infloop: + b=100000000000000000000; seq $b $b + [the bug dates back to the initial implementation] + +** Changes in behavior + + nproc now diagnoses with an error, non option command line parameters. + +** Improvements + + factor's core has been rewritten for speed and increased range. + It can now factor numbers up to 2^128, even without GMP support. + Its speed is from a few times better (for small numbers) to over + 10,000 times better (just below 2^64). The new code also runs a + deterministic primality test for each prime factor, not just a + probabilistic test. + + seq is now up to 70 times faster than it was in coreutils-8.19 and prior, + but only with non-negative whole numbers, an increment of 1, and no + format-changing options. + + stat and tail know about ZFS, VZFS and VMHGFS. stat -f --format=%T now + reports the file system type, and tail -f now uses inotify for files on + ZFS and VZFS file systems, rather than the default (for unknown file + system types) of issuing a warning and reverting to polling. tail -f + still uses polling for files on VMHGFS file systems. + +** Build-related + + root-only tests now check for permissions of our dummy user, + $NON_ROOT_USERNAME, before trying to run binaries from the build directory. + Before, we would get hard-to-diagnose reports of failing root-only tests. + Now, those tests are skipped with a useful diagnostic when the root tests + are run without following the instructions in README. + + We now build most directories using non-recursive make rules. I.e., + rather than running make in man/, lib/, src/, tests/, instead, the top + level Makefile.am includes a $dir/local.mk that describes how to build + the targets in the corresponding directory. Two directories remain + unconverted: po/, gnulib-tests/. One nice side-effect is that the more + accurate dependencies have eliminated a nagging occasional failure that + was seen when running parallel "make syntax-check". + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.19 (2012-08-20) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + df now fails when the list of mounted file systems (/etc/mtab) cannot + be read, yet the file system type information is needed to process + certain options like -a, -l, -t and -x. + [This bug was present in "the beginning".] + + sort -u could fail to output one or more result lines. + For example, this command would fail to print "1": + (yes 7 | head -11; echo 1) | sort --p=1 -S32b -u + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6] + + sort -u could read freed memory. + For example, this evokes a read from freed memory: + perl -le 'print "a\n"."0"x900'|valgrind sort --p=1 -S32b -u>/dev/null + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6] + +** New features + + rm now accepts the --dir (-d) option which makes it remove empty directories. + Since removing empty directories is relatively safe, this option can be + used as a part of the alias rm='rm --dir'. This improves compatibility + with Mac OS X and BSD systems which also honor the -d option. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.18 (2012-08-12) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + cksum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent + processes will not intersperse their output. + [the bug dates back to the initial implementation] + + date -d "$(printf '\xb0')" would print 00:00:00 with today's date + rather than diagnosing the invalid input. Now it reports this: + date: invalid date '\260' + [This bug was present in "the beginning".] + + df no longer outputs control characters present in the mount point name. + Such characters are replaced with '?', so for example, scripts consuming + lines output by df, can work reliably. + [This bug was present in "the beginning".] + + df --total now exits with an appropriate diagnostic and error code, when + file system --type options do not lead to a processed file system. + [This bug dates back to when --total was added in coreutils-7.0] + + head --lines=-N (-n-N) now resets the read pointer of a seekable input file. + This means that "head -n-3" no longer consumes all of its input, and lines + not output by head may be processed by other programs. For example, this + command now prints the final line, 2, while before it would print nothing: + seq 2 > k; (head -n-1 > /dev/null; cat) < k + [This bug was present in "the beginning".] + + ls --color would mis-color relative-named symlinks in / + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.17] + + split now ensures it doesn't overwrite the input file with generated output. + [the bug dates back to the initial implementation] + + stat and df now report the correct file system usage, + in all situations on GNU/Linux, by correctly determining the block size. + [df bug since coreutils-5.0.91, stat bug since the initial implementation] + + tail -f no longer tries to use inotify on AUFS or PanFS file systems + [you might say this was introduced in coreutils-7.5, along with inotify + support, but even now, its magic number isn't in the usual place.] + +** New features + + stat -f recognizes the new remote file system types: aufs, panfs. + +** Changes in behavior + + su: this program has been removed. We stopped installing "su" by + default with the release of coreutils-6.9.90 on 2007-12-01. Now, + that the util-linux package has the union of the Suse and Fedora + patches as well as enough support to build on the Hurd, we no longer + have any reason to include it here. + +** Improvements + + sort avoids redundant processing in the presence of inaccessible inputs, + or unwritable output. Sort now diagnoses certain errors at start-up, + rather than after potentially expensive processing. + + sort now allocates no more than 75% of physical memory by default, + to better share system resources, and thus operate more efficiently. + [The default max memory usage changed from 50% to 100% in coreutils-8.16] + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.17 (2012-05-10) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + id and groups, when invoked with no user name argument, would print + the default group ID listed in the password database, and sometimes + that ID would be neither real nor effective. For example, when run + set-GID, or in a session for which the default group has just been + changed, the new group ID would be listed, even though it is not + yet effective. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1] + + cp S D is no longer subject to a race: if an existing D were removed + between the initial stat and subsequent open-without-O_CREATE, cp would + fail with a confusing diagnostic saying that the destination, D, was not + found. Now, in this unusual case, it retries the open (but with O_CREATE), + and hence usually succeeds. With NFS attribute caching, the condition + was particularly easy to trigger, since there, the removal of D could + precede the initial stat. [This bug was present in "the beginning".] + + split --number=C /dev/null no longer appears to infloop on GNU/Hurd + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8] + + stat no longer reports a negative file size as a huge positive number. + [bug present since 'stat' was introduced in fileutils-4.1.9] + +** New features + + split and truncate now allow any seekable files in situations where + the file size is needed, instead of insisting on regular files. + + fmt now accepts the --goal=WIDTH (-g) option. + + stat -f recognizes new file system types: bdevfs, inodefs, qnx6 + +** Changes in behavior + + cp,mv,install,cat,split: now read and write a minimum of 64KiB at a time. + This was previously 32KiB and increasing to 64KiB was seen to increase + throughput by about 10% when reading cached files on 64 bit GNU/Linux. + + cp --attributes-only no longer truncates any existing destination file, + allowing for more general copying of attributes from one file to another. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.16 (2012-03-26) [stable] + +** New features + + As a GNU extension, 'chmod', 'mkdir', and 'install' now accept operators + '-', '+', '=' followed by octal modes; for example, 'chmod +40 FOO' enables + and 'chmod -40 FOO' disables FOO's group-read permissions. Operator + numeric modes can be combined with symbolic modes by separating them with + commas; for example, =0,u+r clears all permissions except for enabling + user-read permissions. Unlike ordinary numeric modes, operator numeric + modes do not preserve directory setuid and setgid bits; for example, + 'chmod =0 FOO' clears all of FOO's permissions, including setuid and setgid. + + Also, ordinary numeric modes with five or more digits no longer preserve + setuid and setgid bits, so that 'chmod 00755 FOO' now clears FOO's setuid + and setgid bits. This allows scripts to be portable to other systems which + lack the GNU extension mentioned previously, and where ordinary numeric + modes do not preserve directory setuid and setgid bits. + + dd now accepts the count_bytes, skip_bytes iflags and the seek_bytes + oflag, to more easily allow processing portions of a file. + + dd now accepts the conv=sparse flag to attempt to create sparse + output, by seeking rather than writing to the output file. + + ln now accepts the --relative option, to generate a relative + symbolic link to a target, irrespective of how the target is specified. + + split now accepts an optional "from" argument to --numeric-suffixes, + which changes the start number from the default of 0. + + split now accepts the --additional-suffix option, to append an + additional static suffix to output file names. + + basename now supports the -a and -s options, which allow processing + of more than one argument at a time. Also the complementary + -z option was added to delimit output items with the NUL character. + + dirname now supports more than one argument. Also the complementary + -z option was added to delimit output items with the NUL character. + +** Bug fixes + + du --one-file-system (-x) would ignore any non-directory specified on + the command line. For example, "touch f; du -x f" would print nothing. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.15] + + mv now lets you move a symlink onto a same-inode destination file that + has two or more hard links. Before, it would reject that, saying that + they are the same, implicitly warning you that the move would result in + data loss. In this unusual case, when not moving the symlink onto its + referent, there is no risk of data loss, since the symlink will + typically still point to one of the hard links. + + "mv A B" could succeed, yet A would remain. This would happen only when + both A and B were hard links to the same symlink, and with a kernel for + which rename("A","B") does nothing and returns 0 (POSIX mandates this + surprising rename no-op behavior). Now, mv handles this case by skipping + the usually-useless rename and simply unlinking A. + + realpath no longer mishandles a root directory. This was most + noticeable on platforms where // is a different directory than /, + but could also be observed with --relative-base=/ or + --relative-to=/. [bug since the beginning, in 8.15] + +** Improvements + + ls can be much more efficient, especially with large directories on file + systems for which getfilecon-, ACL-check- and XATTR-check-induced syscalls + fail with ENOTSUP or similar. + + 'realpath --relative-base=dir' in isolation now implies '--relative-to=dir' + instead of causing a usage failure. + + split now supports an unlimited number of split files as default behavior. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.15 (2012-01-06) [stable] + +** New programs + + realpath: print resolved file names. + +** Bug fixes + + du -x no longer counts root directories of other file systems. + [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0] + + ls --color many-entry-directory was uninterruptible for too long + [bug introduced in coreutils-5.2.1] + + ls's -k option no longer affects how ls -l outputs file sizes. + It now affects only the per-directory block counts written by -l, + and the sizes written by -s. This is for compatibility with BSD + and with POSIX 2008. Because -k is no longer equivalent to + --block-size=1KiB, a new long option --kibibyte stands for -k. + [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.4] + + ls -l would leak a little memory (security context string) for each + nonempty directory listed on the command line, when using SELinux. + [bug probably introduced in coreutils-6.10 with SELinux support] + + rm -rf DIR would fail with "Device or resource busy" on Cygwin with NWFS + and NcFsd file systems. This did not affect Unix/Linux-based kernels. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0, when rm began using fts] + + split -n 1/2 FILE no longer fails when operating on a growing file, or + (on some systems) when operating on a non-regular file like /dev/zero. + It would report "/dev/zero: No such file or directory" even though + the file obviously exists. Same for -n l/2. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8, with the addition of the -n option] + + stat -f now recognizes the FhGFS and PipeFS file system types. + + tac no longer fails to handle two or more non-seekable inputs + [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0] + + tail -f no longer tries to use inotify on GPFS or FhGFS file systems + [you might say this was introduced in coreutils-7.5, along with inotify + support, but the new magic numbers weren't in the usual places then.] + +** Changes in behavior + + df avoids long UUID-including file system names in the default listing. + With recent enough kernel/tools, these long names would be used, pushing + second and subsequent columns far to the right. Now, when a long name + refers to a symlink, and no file systems are specified, df prints the + usually-short referent instead. + + tail -f now uses polling (not inotify) when any of its file arguments + resides on a file system of unknown type. In addition, for each such + argument, tail -f prints a warning with the FS type magic number and a + request to report it to the bug-reporting address. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.14 (2011-10-12) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + ls --dereference no longer outputs erroneous "argetm" strings for + dangling symlinks when an 'ln=target' entry is in $LS_COLORS. + [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0] + + ls -lL symlink once again properly prints "+" when the referent has an ACL. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.13] + + sort -g no longer infloops for certain inputs containing NaNs + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5] + +** Improvements + + md5sum --check now supports the -r format from the corresponding BSD tool. + This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum. + + pwd now works also on systems without openat. On such systems, pwd + would fail when run from a directory whose absolute name contained + more than PATH_MAX / 3 components. The df, stat and readlink programs + are also affected due to their use of the canonicalize_* functions. + +** Changes in behavior + + timeout now only processes the first signal received from the set + it is handling (SIGTERM, SIGINT, ...). This is to support systems that + implicitly create threads for some timer functions (like GNU/kFreeBSD). + +** Build-related + + "make dist" no longer builds .tar.gz files. + xz is portable enough and in wide-enough use that distributing + only .tar.xz files is enough. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.13 (2011-09-08) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + chown and chgrp with the -v --from= options, now output the correct owner. + I.e., for skipped files, the original ownership is output, not the new one. + [bug introduced in sh-utils-2.0g] + + cp -r could mistakenly change the permissions of an existing destination + directory. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.8] + + cp -u -p would fail to preserve one hard link for each up-to-date copy + of a src-hard-linked name in the destination tree. I.e., if s/a and s/b + are hard-linked and dst/s/a is up to date, "cp -up s dst" would copy s/b + to dst/s/b rather than simply linking dst/s/b to dst/s/a. + [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".] + + fts-using tools (rm, du, chmod, chgrp, chown, chcon) no longer use memory + proportional to the number of entries in each directory they process. + Before, rm -rf 4-million-entry-directory would consume about 1GiB of memory. + Now, it uses less than 30MB, no matter how many entries there are. + [this bug was inherent in the use of fts: thus, for rm the bug was + introduced in coreutils-8.0. The prior implementation of rm did not use + as much memory. du, chmod, chgrp and chown started using fts in 6.0. + chcon was added in coreutils-6.9.91 with fts support. ] + + pr -T no longer ignores a specified LAST_PAGE to stop at. + [bug introduced in textutils-1.19q] + + printf '%d' '"' no longer accesses out-of-bounds memory in the diagnostic. + [bug introduced in sh-utils-1.16] + + split --number l/... no longer creates extraneous files in certain cases. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8] + + timeout now sends signals to commands that create their own process group. + timeout is no longer confused when starting off with a child process. + [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.0] + + unexpand -a now aligns correctly when there are spaces spanning a tabstop, + followed by a tab. In that case a space was dropped, causing misalignment. + We also now ensure that a space never precedes a tab. + [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0] + +** Changes in behavior + + chmod, chown and chgrp now output the original attributes in messages, + when -v or -c specified. + + cp -au (where --preserve=links is implicit) may now replace newer + files in the destination, to mirror hard links from the source. + +** New features + + date now accepts ISO 8601 date-time strings with "T" as the + separator. It has long parsed dates like "2004-02-29 16:21:42" + with a space between the date and time strings. Now it also parses + "2004-02-29T16:21:42" and fractional-second and time-zone-annotated + variants like "2004-02-29T16:21:42.333-07:00" + + md5sum accepts the new --strict option. With --check, it makes the + tool exit non-zero for any invalid input line, rather than just warning. + This also affects sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum. + + split accepts a new --filter=CMD option. With it, split filters output + through CMD. CMD may use the $FILE environment variable, which is set to + the nominal output file name for each invocation of CMD. For example, to + split a file into 3 approximately equal parts, which are then compressed: + split -n3 --filter='xz > $FILE.xz' big + Note the use of single quotes, not double quotes. + That creates files named xaa.xz, xab.xz and xac.xz. + + timeout accepts a new --foreground option, to support commands not started + directly from a shell prompt, where the command is interactive or needs to + receive signals initiated from the terminal. + +** Improvements + + cp -p now copies trivial NSFv4 ACLs on Solaris 10. Before, it would + mistakenly apply a non-trivial ACL to the destination file. + + cp and ls now support HP-UX 11.11's ACLs, thanks to improved support + in gnulib. + + df now supports disk partitions larger than 4 TiB on MacOS X 10.5 + or newer and on AIX 5.2 or newer. + + join --check-order now prints "join: FILE:LINE_NUMBER: bad_line" for an + unsorted input, rather than e.g., "join: file 1 is not in sorted order". + + shuf outputs small subsets of large permutations much more efficiently. + For example 'shuf -i1-$((2**32-1)) -n2' no longer exhausts memory. + + stat -f now recognizes the GPFS, MQUEUE and PSTOREFS file system types. + + timeout now supports sub-second timeouts. + +** Build-related + + Changes inherited from gnulib address a build failure on HP-UX 11.11 + when using /opt/ansic/bin/cc. + + Numerous portability and build improvements inherited via gnulib. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.12 (2011-04-26) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + tail's --follow=name option no longer implies --retry on systems + with inotify support. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5] + +** Changes in behavior + + cp's extent-based (FIEMAP) copying code is more reliable in the face + of varying and undocumented file system semantics: + - it no longer treats unwritten extents specially + - a FIEMAP-based extent copy always uses the FIEMAP_FLAG_SYNC flag. + Before, it would incur the performance penalty of that sync only + for 2.6.38 and older kernels. We thought all problems would be + resolved for 2.6.39. + - it now attempts a FIEMAP copy only on a file that appears sparse. + Sparse files are relatively unusual, and the copying code incurs + the performance penalty of the now-mandatory sync only for them. + +** Portability + + dd once again compiles on AIX 5.1 and 5.2 + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.11 (2011-04-13) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + cp -a --link would not create a hardlink to a symlink, instead + copying the symlink and then not preserving its timestamp. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0] + + cp now avoids FIEMAP issues with BTRFS before Linux 2.6.38, + which could result in corrupt copies of sparse files. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.10] + + cut could segfault when invoked with a user-specified output + delimiter and an unbounded range like "-f1234567890-". + [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0] + + du would infloop when given --files0-from=DIR + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1] + + sort no longer spawns 7 worker threads to sort 16 lines + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6] + + touch built on Solaris 9 would segfault when run on Solaris 10 + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8] + + wc would dereference a NULL pointer upon an early out-of-memory error + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1] + +** New features + + dd now accepts the 'nocache' flag to the iflag and oflag options, + which will discard any cache associated with the files, or + processed portion thereof. + + dd now warns that 'iflag=fullblock' should be used, + in various cases where partial reads can cause issues. + +** Changes in behavior + + cp now avoids syncing files when possible, when doing a FIEMAP copy. + The sync is only needed on Linux kernels before 2.6.39. + [The sync was introduced in coreutils-8.10] + + cp now copies empty extents efficiently, when doing a FIEMAP copy. + It no longer reads the zero bytes from the input, and also can efficiently + create a hole in the output file when --sparse=always is specified. + + df now aligns columns consistently, and no longer wraps entries + with longer device identifiers, over two lines. + + install now rejects its long-deprecated --preserve_context option. + Use --preserve-context instead. + + test now accepts "==" as a synonym for "=" + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.10 (2011-02-04) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + du would abort with a failed assertion when two conditions are met: + part of the hierarchy being traversed is moved to a higher level in the + directory tree, and there is at least one more command line directory + argument following the one containing the moved sub-tree. + [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0] + + join --header now skips the ordering check for the first line + even if the other file is empty. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.5] + + join -v2 now ensures the default output format prints the match field + at the start of the line when it is different to the match field for + the first file. [bug present in "the beginning".] + + rm -f no longer fails for EINVAL or EILSEQ on file systems that + reject file names invalid for that file system. + + uniq -f NUM no longer tries to process fields after end of line. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0] + +** New features + + cp now copies sparse files efficiently on file systems with FIEMAP + support (ext4, btrfs, xfs, ocfs2). Before, it had to read 2^20 bytes + when copying a 1MiB sparse file. Now, it copies bytes only for the + non-sparse sections of a file. Similarly, to induce a hole in the + output file, it had to detect a long sequence of zero bytes. Now, + it knows precisely where each hole in an input file is, and can + reproduce them efficiently in the output file. mv also benefits + when it resorts to copying, e.g., between file systems. + + join now supports -o 'auto' which will automatically infer the + output format from the first line in each file, to ensure + the same number of fields are output for each line. + +** Changes in behavior + + join no longer reports disorder when one of the files is empty. + This allows one to use join as a field extractor like: + join -a1 -o 1.3,1.1 - /dev/null + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.9 (2011-01-04) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + split no longer creates files with a suffix length that + is dependent on the number of bytes or lines per file. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.8] + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.8 (2010-12-22) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + cp -u no longer does unnecessary copying merely because the source + has finer-grained time stamps than the destination. + + od now prints floating-point numbers without losing information, and + it no longer omits spaces between floating-point columns in some cases. + + sort -u with at least two threads could attempt to read through a + corrupted pointer. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6] + + sort with at least two threads and with blocked output would busy-loop + (spinlock) all threads, often using 100% of available CPU cycles to + do no work. I.e., "sort < big-file | less" could waste a lot of power. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6] + + sort with at least two threads no longer segfaults due to use of pointers + into the stack of an expired thread. [bug introduced in coreutils-8.6] + + sort --compress no longer mishandles subprocesses' exit statuses, + no longer hangs indefinitely due to a bug in waiting for subprocesses, + and no longer generates many more than NMERGE subprocesses. + + sort -m -o f f ... f no longer dumps core when file descriptors are limited. + +** Changes in behavior + + sort will not create more than 8 threads by default due to diminishing + performance gains. Also the --parallel option is no longer restricted + to the number of available processors. + +** New features + + split accepts the --number option to generate a specific number of files. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.7 (2010-11-13) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + cp, install, mv, and touch no longer crash when setting file times + on Solaris 10 Update 9 [Solaris PatchID 144488 and newer expose a + latent bug introduced in coreutils 8.1, and possibly a second latent + bug going at least as far back as coreutils 5.97] + + csplit no longer corrupts heap when writing more than 999 files, + nor does it leak memory for every chunk of input processed + [the bugs were present in the initial implementation] + + tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable + remote directory [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5] + +** Changes in behavior + + cp --attributes-only now completely overrides --reflink. + Previously a reflink was needlessly attempted. + + stat's %X, %Y, and %Z directives once again print only the integer + part of seconds since the epoch. This reverts a change from + coreutils-8.6, that was deemed unnecessarily disruptive. + To obtain a nanosecond-precision time stamp for %X use %.X; + if you want (say) just 3 fractional digits, use %.3X. + Likewise for %Y and %Z. + + stat's new %W format directive would print floating point seconds. + However, with the above change to %X, %Y and %Z, we've made %W work + the same way as the others. + + stat gained support for several printf-style flags, such as %'s for + listing sizes with the current locale's thousands separator. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.6 (2010-10-15) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + du no longer multiply counts a file that is a directory or whose + link count is 1, even if the file is reached multiple times by + following symlinks or via multiple arguments. + + du -H and -L now consistently count pointed-to files instead of + symbolic links, and correctly diagnose dangling symlinks. + + du --ignore=D now ignores directory D even when that directory is + found to be part of a directory cycle. Before, du would issue a + "NOTIFY YOUR SYSTEM MANAGER" diagnostic and fail. + + split now diagnoses read errors rather than silently exiting. + [bug introduced in coreutils-4.5.8] + + tac would perform a double-free when given an input line longer than 16KiB. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.3] + + tail -F once again notices changes in a currently unavailable directory, + and works around a Linux kernel bug where inotify runs out of resources. + [bugs introduced in coreutils-7.5] + + tr now consistently handles case conversion character classes. + In some locales, valid conversion specifications caused tr to abort, + while in all locales, some invalid specifications were undiagnosed. + [bugs introduced in coreutils 6.9.90 and 6.9.92] + +** New features + + cp now accepts the --attributes-only option to not copy file data, + which is useful for efficiently modifying files. + + du recognizes -d N as equivalent to --max-depth=N, for compatibility + with FreeBSD. + + sort now accepts the --debug option, to highlight the part of the + line significant in the sort, and warn about questionable options. + + sort now supports -d, -f, -i, -R, and -V in any combination. + + stat now accepts the %m format directive to output the mount point + for a file. It also accepts the %w and %W format directives for + outputting the birth time of a file, if one is available. + +** Changes in behavior + + df now consistently prints the device name for a bind mounted file, + rather than its aliased target. + + du now uses less than half as much memory when operating on trees + with many hard-linked files. With --count-links (-l), or when + operating on trees with no hard-linked files, there is no change. + + ls -l now uses the traditional three field time style rather than + the wider two field numeric ISO style, in locales where a style has + not been specified. The new approach has nicer behavior in some + locales, including English, which was judged to outweigh the disadvantage + of generating less-predictable and often worse output in poorly-configured + locales where there is an onus to specify appropriate non-default styles. + [The old behavior was introduced in coreutils-6.0 and had been removed + for English only using a different method since coreutils-8.1] + + rm's -d now evokes an error; before, it was silently ignored. + + sort -g now uses long doubles for greater range and precision. + + sort -h no longer rejects numbers with leading or trailing ".", and + no longer accepts numbers with multiple ".". It now considers all + zeros to be equal. + + sort now uses the number of available processors to parallelize + the sorting operation. The number of sorts run concurrently can be + limited with the --parallel option or with external process + control like taskset for example. + + stat now provides translated output when no format is specified. + + stat no longer accepts the --context (-Z) option. Initially it was + merely accepted and ignored, for compatibility. Starting two years + ago, with coreutils-7.0, its use evoked a warning. Printing the + SELinux context of a file can be done with the %C format directive, + and the default output when no format is specified now automatically + includes %C when context information is available. + + stat no longer accepts the %C directive when the --file-system + option is in effect, since security context is a file attribute + rather than a file system attribute. + + stat now outputs the full sub-second resolution for the atime, + mtime, and ctime values since the Epoch, when using the %X, %Y, and + %Z directives of the --format option. This matches the fact that + %x, %y, and %z were already doing so for the human-readable variant. + + touch's --file option is no longer recognized. Use --reference=F (-r) + instead. --file has not been documented for 15 years, and its use has + elicited a warning since coreutils-7.1. + + truncate now supports setting file sizes relative to a reference file. + Also errors are no longer suppressed for unsupported file types, and + relative sizes are restricted to supported file types. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.5 (2010-04-23) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + cp and mv once again support preserving extended attributes. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.4] + + cp now preserves "capabilities" when also preserving file ownership. + + ls --color once again honors the 'NORMAL' dircolors directive. + [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11] + + sort -M now handles abbreviated months that are aligned using blanks + in the locale database. Also locales with 8 bit characters are + handled correctly, including multi byte locales with the caveat + that multi byte characters are matched case sensitively. + + sort again handles obsolescent key formats (+POS -POS) correctly. + Previously if -POS was specified, 1 field too many was used in the sort. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2] + +** New features + + join now accepts the --header option, to treat the first line of each + file as a header line to be joined and printed unconditionally. + + timeout now accepts the --kill-after option which sends a kill + signal to the monitored command if it's still running the specified + duration after the initial signal was sent. + + who: the "+/-" --mesg (-T) indicator of whether a user/tty is accepting + messages could be incorrectly listed as "+", when in fact, the user was + not accepting messages (mesg no). Before, who would examine only the + permission bits, and not consider the group of the TTY device file. + Thus, if a login tty's group would change somehow e.g., to "root", + that would make it unwritable (via write(1)) by normal users, in spite + of whatever the permission bits might imply. Now, when configured + using the --with-tty-group[=NAME] option, who also compares the group + of the TTY device with NAME (or "tty" if no group name is specified). + +** Changes in behavior + + ls --color no longer emits the final 3-byte color-resetting escape + sequence when it would be a no-op. + + join -t '' no longer emits an error and instead operates on + each line as a whole (even if they contain NUL characters). + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.4 (2010-01-13) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + nproc --all is now guaranteed to be as large as the count + of available processors, which may not have been the case + on GNU/Linux systems with neither /proc nor /sys available. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1] + +** Build-related + + Work around a build failure when using buggy <sys/capability.h>. + Alternatively, configure with --disable-libcap. + + Compilation would fail on systems using glibc-2.7..2.9 due to changes in + gnulib's wchar.h that tickled a bug in at least those versions of glibc's + own <wchar.h> header. Now, gnulib works around the bug in those older + glibc <wchar.h> headers. + + Building would fail with a link error (cp/copy.o) when XATTR headers + were installed without the corresponding library. Now, configure + detects that and disables xattr support, as one would expect. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.3 (2010-01-07) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + cp -p, install -p, mv, and touch -c could trigger a spurious error + message when using new glibc coupled with an old kernel. + [bug introduced in coreutils-6.12]. + + ls -l --color no longer prints "argetm" in front of dangling + symlinks when the 'LINK target' directive was given to dircolors. + [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0] + + pr's page header was improperly formatted for long file names. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.2] + + rm -r --one-file-system works once again. + The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby + a commmand of the above form would fail for all subdirectories. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0] + + stat -f recognizes more file system types: k-afs, fuseblk, gfs/gfs2, ocfs2, + and rpc_pipefs. Also Minix V3 is displayed correctly as minix3, not minux3. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1] + + tail -f (inotify-enabled) once again works with remote files. + The use of inotify with remote files meant that any changes to those + files that was not done from the local system would go unnoticed. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5] + + tail -F (inotify-enabled) would abort when a tailed file is repeatedly + renamed-aside and then recreated. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5] + + tail -F (inotify-enabled) could fail to follow renamed files. + E.g., given a "tail -F a b" process, running "mv a b" would + make tail stop tracking additions to "b". + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5] + + touch -a and touch -m could trigger bugs in some file systems, such + as xfs or ntfs-3g, and fail to update timestamps. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1] + + wc now prints counts atomically so that concurrent + processes will not intersperse their output. + [the issue dates back to the initial implementation] + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.2 (2009-12-11) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + id's use of mgetgroups no longer writes beyond the end of a malloc'd buffer + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1] + + id no longer crashes on systems without supplementary group support. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.1] + + rm once again handles zero-length arguments properly. + The rewrite to make rm use fts introduced a regression whereby + a command like "rm a '' b" would fail to remove "a" and "b", due to + the presence of the empty string argument. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0] + + sort is now immune to the signal handling of its parent. + Specifically sort now doesn't exit with an error message + if it uses helper processes for compression and its parent + ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9] + + tail without -f no longer accesses uninitialized memory + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6] + + timeout is now immune to the signal handling of its parent. + Specifically timeout now doesn't exit with an error message + if its parent ignores CHLD signals. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.6] + + a user running "make distcheck" in the coreutils source directory, + with TMPDIR unset or set to the name of a world-writable directory, + and with a malicious user on the same system + was vulnerable to arbitrary code execution + [bug introduced in coreutils-5.0] + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.1 (2009-11-18) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + chcon no longer exits immediately just because SELinux is disabled. + Even then, chcon may still be useful. + [bug introduced in coreutils-8.0] + + chcon, chgrp, chmod, chown and du now diagnose an ostensible directory cycle + and arrange to exit nonzero. Before, they would silently ignore the + offending directory and all "contents." + + env -u A=B now fails, rather than silently adding A to the + environment. Likewise, printenv A=B silently ignores the invalid + name. [the bugs date back to the initial implementation] + + ls --color now handles files with capabilities correctly. Previously + files with capabilities were often not colored, and also sometimes, files + without capabilites were colored in error. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0] + + md5sum now prints checksums atomically so that concurrent + processes will not intersperse their output. + This also affected sum, sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum. + [the bug dates back to the initial implementation] + + mktemp no longer leaves a temporary file behind if it was unable to + output the name of the file to stdout. + [the bug dates back to the initial implementation] + + nice -n -1 PROGRAM now runs PROGRAM even when its internal setpriority + call fails with errno == EACCES. + [the bug dates back to the initial implementation] + + nice, nohup, and su now refuse to execute the subsidiary program if + they detect write failure in printing an otherwise non-fatal warning + message to stderr. + + stat -f recognizes more file system types: afs, cifs, anon-inode FS, + btrfs, cgroupfs, cramfs-wend, debugfs, futexfs, hfs, inotifyfs, minux3, + nilfs, securityfs, selinux, xenfs + + tail -f (inotify-enabled) now avoids a race condition. + Before, any data appended in the tiny interval between the initial + read-to-EOF and the inotify watch initialization would be ignored + initially (until more data was appended), or forever, if the file + were first renamed or unlinked or never modified. + [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5] + + tail -F (inotify-enabled) now consistently tails a file that has been + replaced via renaming. That operation provokes either of two sequences + of inotify events. The less common sequence is now handled as well. + [The bug came with the implementation change in coreutils-7.5] + + timeout now doesn't exit unless the command it is monitoring does, + for any specified signal. [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0]. + +** Changes in behavior + + chroot, env, nice, and su fail with status 125, rather than 1, on + internal error such as failure to parse command line arguments; this + is for consistency with stdbuf and timeout, and avoids ambiguity + with the invoked command failing with status 1. Likewise, nohup + fails with status 125 instead of 127. + + du (due to a change in gnulib's fts) can now traverse NFSv4 automounted + directories in which the stat'd device number of the mount point differs + during a traversal. Before, it would fail, because such a mismatch would + usually represent a serious error or a subversion attempt. + + echo and printf now interpret \e as the Escape character (0x1B). + + rm -f /read-only-fs/nonexistent now succeeds and prints no diagnostic + on systems with an unlinkat syscall that sets errno to EROFS in that case. + Before, it would fail with a "Read-only file system" diagnostic. + Also, "rm /read-only-fs/nonexistent" now reports "file not found" rather + than the less precise "Read-only file system" error. + +** New programs + + nproc: Print the number of processing units available to a process. + +** New features + + env and printenv now accept the option --null (-0), as a means to + avoid ambiguity with newlines embedded in the environment. + + md5sum --check now also accepts openssl-style checksums. + So do sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum and sha512sum. + + mktemp now accepts the option --suffix to provide a known suffix + after the substitution in the template. Additionally, uses such as + "mktemp fileXXXXXX.txt" are able to infer an appropriate --suffix. + + touch now accepts the option --no-dereference (-h), as a means to + change symlink timestamps on platforms with enough support. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 8.0 (2009-10-06) [beta] + +** Bug fixes + + cp --preserve=xattr and --archive now preserve extended attributes even + when the source file doesn't have write access. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1] + + touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.ss] now accepts a timestamp string ending in .60, + to accommodate leap seconds. + [the bug dates back to the initial implementation] + + ls --color now reverts to the color of a base file type consistently + when the color of a more specific type is disabled. + [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90] + + ls -LR exits with status 2, not 0, when it encounters a cycle + + "ls -is" is now consistent with ls -lis in ignoring values returned + from a failed stat/lstat. For example ls -Lis now prints "?", not "0", + for the inode number and allocated size of a dereferenced dangling symlink. + + tail --follow --pid now avoids a race condition where data written + just before the process dies might not have been output by tail. + Also, tail no longer delays at all when the specified pid is not live. + [The race was introduced in coreutils-7.5, + and the unnecessary delay was present since textutils-1.22o] + +** Portability + + On Solaris 9, many commands would mistakenly treat file/ the same as + file. Now, even on such a system, path resolution obeys the POSIX + rules that a trailing slash ensures that the preceding name is a + directory or a symlink to a directory. + +** Changes in behavior + + id no longer prints SELinux " context=..." when the POSIXLY_CORRECT + environment variable is set. + + readlink -f now ignores a trailing slash when deciding if the + last component (possibly via a dangling symlink) can be created, + since mkdir will succeed in that case. + +** New features + + ln now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P), + added by POSIX 2008. The default behavior is -P on systems like + GNU/Linux where link(2) creates hard links to symlinks, and -L on + BSD systems where link(2) follows symlinks. + + stat: without -f, a command-line argument of "-" now means standard input. + With --file-system (-f), an argument of "-" is now rejected. + If you really must operate on a file named "-", specify it as + "./-" or use "--" to separate options from arguments. + +** Improvements + + rm: rewrite to use gnulib's fts + This makes rm -rf significantly faster (400-500%) in some pathological + cases, and slightly slower (20%) in at least one pathological case. + + rm -r deletes deep hierarchies more efficiently. Before, execution time + was quadratic in the depth of the hierarchy, now it is merely linear. + However, this improvement is not as pronounced as might be expected for + very deep trees, because prior to this change, for any relative name + length longer than 8KiB, rm -r would sacrifice official conformance to + avoid the disproportionate quadratic performance penalty. Leading to + another improvement: + + rm -r is now slightly more standards-conformant when operating on + write-protected files with relative names longer than 8KiB. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 7.6 (2009-09-11) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + cp, mv now ignore failure to preserve a symlink time stamp, when it is + due to their running on a kernel older than what was implied by headers + and libraries tested at configure time. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5] + + cp --reflink --preserve now preserves attributes when cloning a file. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5] + + cp --preserve=xattr no longer leaks resources on each preservation failure. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1] + + dd now exits with non-zero status when it encounters a write error while + printing a summary to stderr. + [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11] + + dd cbs=N conv=unblock would fail to print a final newline when the size + of the input was not a multiple of N bytes. + [the non-conforming behavior dates back to the initial implementation] + + df no longer requires that each command-line argument be readable + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.3] + + ls -i now prints consistent inode numbers also for mount points. + This makes ls -i DIR less efficient on systems with dysfunctional readdir, + because ls must stat every file in order to obtain a guaranteed-valid + inode number. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0] + + tail -f (inotify-enabled) now flushes any initial output before blocking. + Before, this would print nothing and wait: stdbuf -o 4K tail -f /etc/passwd + Note that this bug affects tail -f only when its standard output is buffered, + which is relatively unusual. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5] + + tail -f once again works with standard input. inotify-enabled tail -f + would fail when operating on a nameless stdin. I.e., tail -f < /etc/passwd + would say "tail: cannot watch `-': No such file or directory", yet the + relatively baroque tail -f /dev/stdin < /etc/passwd would work. Now, the + offending usage causes tail to revert to its conventional sleep-based + (i.e., not inotify-based) implementation. + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.5] + +** Portability + + ln, link: link f z/ would mistakenly succeed on Solaris 10, given an + existing file, f, and nothing named "z". ln -T f z/ has the same problem. + Each would mistakenly create "z" as a link to "f". Now, even on such a + system, each command reports the error, e.g., + link: cannot create link `z/' to `f': Not a directory + +** New features + + cp --reflink accepts a new "auto" parameter which falls back to + a standard copy if creating a copy-on-write clone is not possible. + +** Changes in behavior + + tail -f now ignores "-" when stdin is a pipe or FIFO. + tail-with-no-args now ignores -f unconditionally when stdin is a pipe or FIFO. + Before, it would ignore -f only when no file argument was specified, + and then only when POSIXLY_CORRECT was set. Now, :|tail -f - terminates + immediately. Before, it would block indefinitely. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 7.5 (2009-08-20) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + dd's oflag=direct option now works even when the size of the input + is not a multiple of e.g., 512 bytes. + + dd now handles signals consistently even when they're received + before data copying has started. + + install runs faster again with SELinux enabled + [introduced in coreutils-7.0] + + ls -1U (with two or more arguments, at least one a nonempty directory) + would print entry names *before* the name of the containing directory. + Also fixed incorrect output of ls -1RU and ls -1sU. + [introduced in coreutils-7.0] + + sort now correctly ignores fields whose ending position is specified + before the start position. Previously in numeric mode the remaining + part of the line after the start position was used as the sort key. + [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning".] + + truncate -s failed to skip all whitespace in the option argument in + some locales. + +** New programs + + stdbuf: A new program to run a command with modified stdio buffering + for its standard streams. + +** Changes in behavior + + ls --color: files with multiple hard links are no longer colored differently + by default. That can be enabled by changing the LS_COLORS environment + variable. You can control that using the MULTIHARDLINK dircolors input + variable which corresponds to the 'mh' LS_COLORS item. Note these variables + were renamed from 'HARDLINK' and 'hl' which were available since + coreutils-7.1 when this feature was introduced. + +** Deprecated options + + nl --page-increment: deprecated in favor of --line-increment, the new option + maintains the previous semantics and the same short option, -i. + +** New features + + chroot now accepts the options --userspec and --groups. + + cp accepts a new option, --reflink: create a lightweight copy + using copy-on-write (COW). This is currently only supported within + a btrfs file system. + + cp now preserves time stamps on symbolic links, when possible + + sort accepts a new option, --human-numeric-sort (-h): sort numbers + while honoring human readable suffixes like KiB and MB etc. + + tail --follow now uses inotify when possible, to be more responsive + to file changes and more efficient when monitoring many files. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 7.4 (2009-05-07) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + date -d 'next mon', when run on a Monday, now prints the date + 7 days in the future rather than the current day. Same for any other + day-of-the-week name, when run on that same day of the week. + [This bug appears to have been present in "the beginning". ] + + date -d tuesday, when run on a Tuesday -- using date built from the 7.3 + release tarball, not from git -- would print the date 7 days in the future. + Now, it works properly and prints the current date. That was due to + human error (including not-committed changes in a release tarball) + and the fact that there is no check to detect when the gnulib/ git + submodule is dirty. + +** Build-related + + make check: two tests have been corrected + +** Portability + + There have been some ACL-related portability fixes for *BSD, + inherited from gnulib. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 7.3 (2009-05-01) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + cp now diagnoses failure to preserve selinux/xattr attributes when + --preserve=context,xattr is specified in combination with -a. + Also, cp no longer suppresses attribute-preservation diagnostics + when preserving SELinux context was explicitly requested. + + ls now aligns output correctly in the presence of abbreviated month + names from the locale database that have differing widths. + + ls -v and sort -V now order names like "#.b#" properly + + mv: do not print diagnostics when failing to preserve xattr's on file + systems without xattr support. + + sort -m no longer segfaults when its output file is also an input file. + E.g., with this, touch 1; sort -m -o 1 1, sort would segfault. + [introduced in coreutils-7.2] + +** Changes in behavior + + shred, sort, shuf: now use an internal pseudorandom generator by default. + This is mainly noticeable in shred where the 3 random passes it does by + default should proceed at the speed of the disk. Previously /dev/urandom + was used if available, which is relatively slow on GNU/Linux systems. + +** Improved robustness + + cp would exit successfully after copying less than the full contents + of a file larger than ~4000 bytes from a linux-/proc file system to a + destination file system with a fundamental block size of 4KiB or greater. + Reading into a 4KiB-or-larger buffer, cp's "read" syscall would return + a value smaller than 4096, and cp would interpret that as EOF (POSIX + allows this). This optimization, now removed, saved 50% of cp's read + syscalls when copying small files. Affected linux kernels: at least + 2.6.9 through 2.6.29. + [the optimization was introduced in coreutils-6.0] + +** Portability + + df now pre-mounts automountable directories even with automounters for + which stat-like syscalls no longer provoke mounting. Now, df uses open. + + 'id -G $USER' now works correctly even on Darwin and NetBSD. Previously it + would either truncate the group list to 10, or go into an infinite loop, + due to their non-standard getgrouplist implementations. + [truncation introduced in coreutils-6.11] + [infinite loop introduced in coreutils-7.1] + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 7.2 (2009-03-31) [stable] + +** New features + + pwd now accepts the options --logical (-L) and --physical (-P). For + compatibility with existing scripts, -P is the default behavior + unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is requested. + +** Bug fixes + + cat once again immediately outputs data it has processed. + Previously it would have been buffered and only output if enough + data was read, or on process exit. + [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0] + + comm's new --check-order option would fail to detect disorder on any pair + of lines where one was a prefix of the other. For example, this would + fail to report the disorder: printf 'Xb\nX\n'>k; comm --check-order k k + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.0] + + cp once again diagnoses the invalid "cp -rl dir dir" right away, + rather than after creating a very deep dir/dir/dir/... hierarchy. + The bug strikes only with both --recursive (-r, -R) and --link (-l). + [bug introduced in coreutils-7.1] + + ls --sort=version (-v) sorted names beginning with "." inconsistently. + Now, names that start with "." are always listed before those that don't. + + pr: fix the bug whereby --indent=N (-o) did not indent header lines + [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90] + + sort now handles specified key ends correctly. + Previously -k1,1b would have caused leading space from field 2 to be + included in the sort while -k2,3.0 would have not included field 3. + +** Changes in behavior + + cat,cp,install,mv,split: these programs now read and write a minimum + of 32KiB at a time. This was seen to double throughput when reading + cached files on GNU/Linux-based systems. + + cp -a now tries to preserve extended attributes (xattr), but does not + diagnose xattr-preservation failure. However, cp --preserve=all still does. + + ls --color: hard link highlighting can be now disabled by changing the + LS_COLORS environment variable. To disable it you can add something like + this to your profile: eval `dircolors | sed s/hl=[^:]*:/hl=:/` + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 7.1 (2009-02-21) [stable] + +** New features + + Add extended attribute support available on certain filesystems like ext2 + and XFS. + cp: Tries to copy xattrs when --preserve=xattr or --preserve=all specified + mv: Always tries to copy xattrs + install: Never copies xattrs + + cp and mv accept a new option, --no-clobber (-n): silently refrain + from overwriting any existing destination file + + dd accepts iflag=cio and oflag=cio to open the file in CIO (concurrent I/O) + mode where this feature is available. + + install accepts a new option, --compare (-C): compare each pair of source + and destination files, and if the destination has identical content and + any specified owner, group, permissions, and possibly SELinux context, then + do not modify the destination at all. + + ls --color now highlights hard linked files, too + + stat -f recognizes the Lustre file system type + +** Bug fixes + + chgrp, chmod, chown --silent (--quiet, -f) no longer print some diagnostics + [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1] + + cp uses much less memory in some situations + + cp -a now correctly tries to preserve SELinux context (announced in 6.9.90), + doesn't inform about failure, unlike with --preserve=all + + du --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM before + processing the first file name + + seq 9223372036854775807 9223372036854775808 now prints only two numbers + on systems with extended long double support and good library support. + Even with this patch, on some systems, it still produces invalid output, + from 3 to at least 1026 lines long. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.11] + + seq -w now accounts for a decimal point added to the last number + to correctly print all numbers to the same width. + + wc --files0-from=FILE no longer reads all of FILE into RAM, before + processing the first file name, unless the list of names is known + to be small enough. + +** Changes in behavior + + cp and mv: the --reply={yes,no,query} option has been removed. + Using it has elicited a warning for the last three years. + + dd: user specified offsets that are too big are handled better. + Previously, erroneous parameters to skip and seek could result + in redundant reading of the file with no warnings or errors. + + du: -H (initially equivalent to --si) is now equivalent to + --dereference-args, and thus works as POSIX requires + + shred: now does 3 overwrite passes by default rather than 25. + + ls -l now marks SELinux-only files with the less obtrusive '.', + rather than '+'. A file with any other combination of MAC and ACL + is still marked with a '+'. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 7.0 (2008-10-05) [beta] + +** New programs + + timeout: Run a command with bounded time. + truncate: Set the size of a file to a specified size. + +** New features + + chgrp, chmod, chown, chcon, du, rm: now all display linear performance, + even when operating on million-entry directories on ext3 and ext4 file + systems. Before, they would exhibit O(N^2) performance, due to linear + per-entry seek time cost when operating on entries in readdir order. + Rm was improved directly, while the others inherit the improvement + from the newer version of fts in gnulib. + + comm now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can + be turned off with the --nocheck-order option. + + comm accepts new option, --output-delimiter=STR, that allows specification + of an output delimiter other than the default single TAB. + + cp and mv: the deprecated --reply=X option is now also undocumented. + + dd accepts iflag=fullblock to make it accumulate full input blocks. + With this new option, after a short read, dd repeatedly calls read, + until it fills the incomplete block, reaches EOF, or encounters an error. + + df accepts a new option --total, which produces a grand total of all + arguments after all arguments have been processed. + + If the GNU MP library is available at configure time, factor and + expr support arbitrarily large numbers. Pollard's rho algorithm is + used to factor large numbers. + + install accepts a new option --strip-program to specify the program used to + strip binaries. + + ls now colorizes files with capabilities if libcap is available + + ls -v now uses filevercmp function as sort predicate (instead of strverscmp) + + md5sum now accepts the new option, --quiet, to suppress the printing of + 'OK' messages. sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum accept it, too. + + sort accepts a new option, --files0-from=F, that specifies a file + containing a null-separated list of files to sort. This list is used + instead of filenames passed on the command-line to avoid problems with + maximum command-line (argv) length. + + sort accepts a new option --batch-size=NMERGE, where NMERGE + represents the maximum number of inputs that will be merged at once. + When processing more than NMERGE inputs, sort uses temporary files. + + sort accepts a new option --version-sort (-V, --sort=version), + specifying that ordering is to be based on filevercmp. + +** Bug fixes + + chcon --verbose now prints a newline after each message + + od no longer suffers from platform bugs in printf(3). This is + probably most noticeable when using 'od -tfL' to print long doubles. + + seq -0.1 0.1 2 now prints 2,0 when locale's decimal point is ",". + Before, it would mistakenly omit the final number in that example. + + shuf honors the --zero-terminated (-z) option, even with --input-range=LO-HI + + shuf --head-count is now correctly documented. The documentation + previously claimed it was called --head-lines. + +** Improvements + + Improved support for access control lists (ACLs): On MacOS X, Solaris 7..10, + HP-UX 11, Tru64, AIX, IRIX 6.5, and Cygwin, "ls -l" now displays the presence + of an ACL on a file via a '+' sign after the mode, and "cp -p" copies ACLs. + + join has significantly better performance due to better memory management + + ls now uses constant memory when not sorting and using one_per_line format, + no matter how many files are in a given directory. I.e., to list a directory + with very many files, ls -1U is much more efficient. + + od now aligns fields across lines when printing multiple -t + specifiers, and no longer prints fields that resulted entirely from + padding the input out to the least common multiple width. + +** Changes in behavior + + stat's --context (-Z) option has always been a no-op. + Now it evokes a warning that it is obsolete and will be removed. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 6.12 (2008-05-31) [stable] + +** New features + + cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve nanosecond resolution on + file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimensat' and + 'futimens' system calls. + +** Bug fixes + + chcon, runcon: --help output now includes the bug-reporting address + + cp -p copies permissions more portably. For example, on MacOS X 10.5, + "cp -p some-fifo some-file" no longer fails while trying to copy the + permissions from the some-fifo argument. + + id with no options now prints the SELinux context only when invoked + with no USERNAME argument. + + id and groups once again print the AFS-specific nameless group-ID (PAG). + Printing of such large-numbered, kernel-only (not in /etc/group) group-IDs + was suppressed in 6.11 due to ignorance that they are useful. + + uniq: avoid subtle field-skipping malfunction due to isblank misuse. + In some locales on some systems, isblank(240) (aka  ) is nonzero. + On such systems, uniq --skip-fields=N would fail to skip the proper + number of fields for some inputs. + + tac: avoid segfault with --regex (-r) and multiple files, e.g., + "echo > x; tac -r x x". [bug present at least in textutils-1.8b, from 1992] + +** Changes in behavior + + install once again sets SELinux context, when possible + [it was deliberately disabled in 6.9.90] + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 6.11 (2008-04-19) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + configure --enable-no-install-program=groups now works. + + "cp -fR fifo E" now succeeds with an existing E. Before this fix, using + -fR to copy a fifo or "special" file onto an existing file would fail + with EEXIST. Now, it once again unlinks the destination before trying + to create the destination file. [bug introduced in coreutils-5.90] + + dd once again works with unnecessary options like if=/dev/stdin and + of=/dev/stdout. [bug introduced in fileutils-4.0h] + + id now uses getgrouplist, when possible. This results in + much better performance when there are many users and/or groups. + + ls no longer segfaults on files in /proc when linked with an older version + of libselinux. E.g., ls -l /proc/sys would dereference a NULL pointer. + + md5sum would segfault for invalid BSD-style input, e.g., + echo 'MD5 (' | md5sum -c - Now, md5sum ignores that line. + sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too. + [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0] + + md5sum -c would accept a NUL-containing checksum string like "abcd\0..." + and would unnecessarily read and compute the checksum of the named file, + and then compare that checksum to the invalid one: guaranteed to fail. + Now, it recognizes that the line is not valid and skips it. + sha1sum, sha224sum, sha384sum, and sha512sum are affected, too. + [bug present in the original version, in coreutils-4.5.1, 1995] + + "mkdir -Z x dir" no longer segfaults when diagnosing invalid context "x" + mkfifo and mknod would fail similarly. Now they're fixed. + + mv would mistakenly unlink a destination file before calling rename, + when the destination had two or more hard links. It no longer does that. + [bug introduced in coreutils-5.3.0] + + "paste -d'\' file" no longer overruns memory (heap since coreutils-5.1.2, + stack before then) [bug present in the original version, in 1992] + + "pr -e" with a mix of backspaces and TABs no longer corrupts the heap + [bug present in the original version, in 1992] + + "ptx -F'\' long-file-name" would overrun a malloc'd buffer and corrupt + the heap. That was triggered by a lone backslash (or odd number of them) + at the end of the option argument to --flag-truncation=STRING (-F), + --word-regexp=REGEXP (-W), or --sentence-regexp=REGEXP (-S). + + "rm -r DIR" would mistakenly declare to be "write protected" -- and + prompt about -- full DIR-relative names longer than MIN (PATH_MAX, 8192). + + "rmdir --ignore-fail-on-non-empty" detects and ignores the failure + in more cases when a directory is empty. + + "seq -f % 1" would issue the erroneous diagnostic "seq: memory exhausted" + rather than reporting the invalid string format. + [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0] + +** New features + + join now verifies that the inputs are in sorted order. This check can + be turned off with the --nocheck-order option. + + sort accepts the new option --sort=WORD, where WORD can be one of + general-numeric, month, numeric or random. These are equivalent to the + options --general-numeric-sort/-g, --month-sort/-M, --numeric-sort/-n + and --random-sort/-R, resp. + +** Improvements + + id and groups work around an AFS-related bug whereby those programs + would print an invalid group number, when given no user-name argument. + + ls --color no longer outputs unnecessary escape sequences + + seq gives better diagnostics for invalid formats. + +** Portability + + rm now works properly even on systems like BeOS and Haiku, + which have negative errno values. + +** Consistency + + install, mkdir, rmdir and split now write --verbose output to stdout, + not to stderr. + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 6.10 (2008-01-22) [stable] + +** Bug fixes + + Fix a non-portable use of sed in configure.ac. + [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.92] + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.92 (2008-01-12) [beta] + +** Bug fixes + + cp --parents no longer uses uninitialized memory when restoring the + permissions of a just-created destination directory. + [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90] + + tr's case conversion would fail in a locale with differing numbers + of lower case and upper case characters. E.g., this would fail: + env LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' + [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9.90] + +** Improvements + + "touch -d now writable-but-owned-by-someone-else" now succeeds + whenever that same command would succeed without "-d now". + Before, it would work fine with no -d option, yet it would + fail with the ostensibly-equivalent "-d now". + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.91 (2007-12-15) [beta] + +** Bug fixes + + "ls -l" would not output "+" on SELinux hosts unless -Z was also given. + + "rm" would fail to unlink a non-directory when run in an environment + in which the user running rm is capable of unlinking a directory. + [bug introduced in coreutils-6.9] + + +* Noteworthy changes in release 6.9.90 (2007-12-01) [beta] + +** New programs + + arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default + But don't install this program on Solaris systems. + + chcon: change the SELinux security context of a file + + mktemp: create a temporary file or directory (or names) + + runcon: run a program in a different SELinux security context + +** Programs no longer installed by default + + hostname, su + +** Changes in behavior + + cp, by default, refuses to copy through a dangling destination symlink + Set POSIXLY_CORRECT if you require the old, risk-prone behavior. + + pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in + the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX. + + tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string. + The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage, + and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte. + +** New features + + Add SELinux support, based on the patch from Fedora: + * cp accepts new --preserve=context option. + * "cp -a" works with SELinux: + Now, cp -a attempts to preserve context, but failure to do so does + not change cp's exit status. However "cp --preserve=context" is + similar, but failure *does* cause cp to exit with nonzero status. + * install accepts new "-Z, --context=C" option. + * id accepts new "-Z" option. + * stat honors the new %C format directive: SELinux security context string + * ls accepts a slightly modified -Z option. + * ls: contrary to Fedora version, does not accept --lcontext and --scontext + + The following commands and options now support the standard size + suffixes kB, M, MB, G, GB, and so on for T, P, Y, Z, and Y: + head -c, head -n, od -j, od -N, od -S, split -b, split -C, + tail -c, tail -n. + + cp -p tries to preserve the GID of a file even if preserving the UID + is not possible. + + uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort + option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce + NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines. + + wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales. + This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output + (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many + error messages. + +** New build options + + By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su. + To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su. + If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this: + ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su. + + You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs + at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and + "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime + Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not + built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building + and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts + of "make check" fail. + +** Remove deprecated options + + df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option. + du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options. + ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option. + ptx longer accepts the --copyright option. + who no longer accepts -i or --idle. + +** Improved robustness + + ln -f can no longer silently clobber a just-created hard link. + In some cases, ln could be seen as being responsible for data loss. + For example, given directories a, b, c, and files a/f and b/f, we + should be able to do this safely: ln -f a/f b/f c && rm -f a/f b/f + However, before this change, ln would succeed, and thus cause the + loss of the contents of a/f. + + stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values + in its 35-colon command-line argument + +** Bug fixes + + chmod no longer ignores a dangling symlink. Now, chmod fails + with a diagnostic saying that it cannot operate on such a file. + [bug introduced in coreutils-5.1.0] + + cp attempts to read a regular file, even if stat says it is empty. + Before, "cp /proc/cpuinfo c" would create an empty file when the kernel + reports stat.st_size == 0, while "cat /proc/cpuinfo > c" would "work", + and create a nonempty one. [bug introduced in coreutils-6.0] + + cp --parents no longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file + name components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b d" + no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a destination + symlink to be the same as the referenced file when copying links + or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink to FILE, + "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently doing + nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when the + destination is a symlink. + + "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv + + "cp -i" now detects read errors on standard input, and no longer consumes + too much seekable input; same for ln, install, mv, and rm. + + cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid; + before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2). + + "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-" + + cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather + than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-". + + date -d now accepts strings of the form e.g., 'YYYYMMDD +N days', + in addition to the usual 'YYYYMMDD N days'. + + du -s now includes the size of any stat'able-but-inaccessible directory + in the total size. + + du (without -s) prints whatever it knows of the size of an inaccessible + directory. Before, du would print nothing for such a directory. + + ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the + first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8] + + ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were + a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink + was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support. + [introduced in coreutils-6.0] + + ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the + ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target" + before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0] + + od's --skip (-j) option now works even when the kernel says that a + nonempty regular file has stat.st_size = 0. This happens at least + with files in /proc and linux-2.6.22. + + "od -j L FILE" had a bug: when the number of bytes to skip, L, is exactly + the same as the length of FILE, od would skip *no* bytes. When the number + of bytes to skip is exactly the sum of the lengths of the first N files, + od would skip only the first N-1 files. [introduced in textutils-2.0.9] + + ./printf %.10000000f 1 could get an internal ENOMEM error and generate + no output, yet erroneously exit with status 0. Now it diagnoses the error + and exits with nonzero status. [present in initial implementation] + + seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003", + so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed. + + seq would mistakenly reject some valid format strings containing %%, + and would mistakenly accept some invalid ones. e.g., %g%% and %%g, resp. + + "seq .1 .1" would mistakenly generate no output on some systems + + Obsolete sort usage with an invalid ordering-option character, e.g., + "env _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 sort +1x" no longer makes sort free an + invalid pointer [introduced in coreutils-6.5] + + sorting very long lines (relative to the amount of available memory) + no longer provokes unaligned memory access + + split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file + [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)] + + tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the + complement of Set1. [present in the original version, in 1992] + + tr no longer rejects an unmatched [:lower:] or [:upper:] in SET1. + [present in the original version] + + * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable] ** Bug fixes @@ -10,10 +2610,9 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though. - Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator) + Using pr -m -s (i.e., merging files, with TAB as the output separator) no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns. - * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable] ** Bug fixes @@ -51,11 +2650,33 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent directory is unreadable. + rm (without -f) could prompt when it shouldn't, or fail to prompt + when it should, when operating on a full name longer than 511 bytes + and getting an ENOMEM error while trying to form the long name. + + rm could mistakenly traverse into the wrong directory under unusual + conditions: when a full name longer than 511 bytes specifies a search-only + directory, and when forming that name fails with ENOMEM, rm would attempt + to open a truncated-to-511-byte name with the first five bytes replaced + with "[...]". If such a directory were to actually exist, rm would attempt + to remove it. + "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic. Before it would print nothing. "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F + "rm -rf D" would emit a misleading diagnostic when failing to + remove a symbolic link within the unwritable directory, D. + Introduced in coreutils-6.0. Similarly, when a cross-partition + "mv" fails because the source directory is unwritable, it now gives + a reasonable diagnostic. Before, this would print + $ mkdir /tmp/x; touch /tmp/x/y; chmod -w /tmp/x; + $ test $(stat -c %d /tmp/x) -ne $(stat -c %d .) && mv /tmp/x/y . + mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Not a directory + Now it prints this: + mv: cannot remove `/tmp/x/y': Permission denied. + ** New features sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression @@ -87,7 +2708,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries. - This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6. + This bug affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6. du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects @@ -201,9 +2822,9 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs. - rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /' + rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., 'rm -fr /' now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with - a final `./' or `../' component. + a final './' or '../' component. tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did @@ -285,23 +2906,23 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g., - `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's + 'chmod 755 DIR' and 'chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and - similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To + similarly for 'mkdir -m 755 DIR' and 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g., - `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly - in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR', - `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on + 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly + in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., 'mkdir -m 2755 DIR', + 'mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the - bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m - 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it. - Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and - `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use - something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it. + bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 'mkdir -m + 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but 'chmod 777 D' clears it. + Conversely, Solaris 10 'mkdir -m 777 D', 'mkdir -m g-s D', and + 'chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use + something like 'chmod g-s D' to clear it. - `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the + 'cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link. This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel. @@ -333,7 +2954,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- now checks for). install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly, - e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored. + e.g., 'mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored. install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755) instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does @@ -367,7 +2988,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers. - You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623', + You no longer need the '-f%.f' in 'seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623', for example, since the default format now has the same effect. seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats. @@ -448,7 +3069,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- shred and sort now accept the --random-source option. - sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option. + sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and 'R' ordering option. sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX @@ -465,7 +3086,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems - When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the + When 'cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses them with hard-linked directories. @@ -527,11 +3148,11 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations). - md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker - (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems. + md5sum once again defaults to using the ' ' non-binary marker + (rather than the '*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems. mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create - a directory like `nonexistent/.' + a directory like 'nonexistent/.' rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems. @@ -576,7 +3197,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- ** 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. + that the long-named option is deprecated. Use '-k' instead. du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning. Use -m instead. @@ -584,7 +3205,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable] -** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when +** 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. @@ -607,9 +3228,9 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- 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) + 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 @@ -739,7 +3360,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- "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 + "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". @@ -761,7 +3382,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- 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 + '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. @@ -897,7 +3518,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- 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 + '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 @@ -981,11 +3602,11 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- ** New features - For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file + 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. + 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 @@ -1029,7 +3650,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- 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 + 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 @@ -1045,12 +3666,12 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- 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 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. + 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, @@ -1062,7 +3683,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30' - `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs + '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, @@ -1084,10 +3705,10 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- 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, + 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: + '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 @@ -1128,32 +3749,32 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- 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 + '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 &', + 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: + '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, + 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. + 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 + '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'. + containing '.' that happens to equal 'user.group'. * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable] @@ -1167,8 +3788,8 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- ** Bug fixes - `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that - declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions. + '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. @@ -1282,7 +3903,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- 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) + dd 'unblock' and 'sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync) * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08): @@ -1304,18 +3925,18 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- 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 + '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 -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 + 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 @@ -1328,14 +3949,14 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- (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 `%' + 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. + '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. + '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. @@ -1345,7 +3966,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- 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 + '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 @@ -1357,14 +3978,14 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases - `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX: + 'test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX: - `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit + '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 -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. + '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 @@ -1380,7 +4001,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- 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 + '[' 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. @@ -1397,10 +4018,10 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires. - `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should + '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. + 'su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should. ** Fewer arbitrary limitations @@ -1411,7 +4032,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15): ** New programs -- new program: `[' (much like `test') +- new program: '[' (much like 'test') ** New features - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the @@ -1419,9 +4040,9 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- - 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 +- 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 + 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; @@ -1437,24 +4058,24 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- ** Bug fixes - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed -- `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line +- '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. + 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 +- 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 +- '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 +- 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 +- 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 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 @@ -1466,12 +4087,12 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- - 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 +- '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 + 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): @@ -1485,8 +4106,8 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- [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 +* 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 @@ -1494,7 +4115,7 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- * 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 +* 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 @@ -1504,12 +4125,12 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- * 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 +* '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 +* mv and 'cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under certain unusual conditions where they used to fail [4.5.8] @@ -1518,15 +4139,15 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- * 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 +* 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. + '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* + '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. @@ -1539,8 +4160,8 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- * 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 +* '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] @@ -1554,16 +4175,16 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- * 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 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. + 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 + 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 @@ -1575,13 +4196,13 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- [4.5.4] * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership -* `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly +* '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 `/'. +* '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. @@ -1598,18 +4219,18 @@ GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*- 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' +* 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 +* '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 +* '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 +* 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 @@ -1622,7 +4243,7 @@ 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] +* '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] @@ -1631,8 +4252,8 @@ point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils: * 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] + Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 through 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. @@ -1640,7 +4261,7 @@ point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils: * 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 +* '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 @@ -1651,7 +4272,7 @@ point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils: * 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 +* 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 @@ -1660,14 +4281,14 @@ point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils: * 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. + 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'. +* 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) @@ -1678,9 +4299,9 @@ point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils: [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. +* 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 + 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; @@ -1688,7 +4309,7 @@ point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils: 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 + 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 @@ -1703,21 +4324,21 @@ point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils: --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' + 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'. + 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, +* 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 +* '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 @@ -1728,8 +4349,8 @@ point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils: * 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 '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 @@ -1770,10 +4391,10 @@ point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils: * 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 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'. + - '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. @@ -1788,23 +4409,23 @@ point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils: (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'. + 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 +* 'date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core * some DOS/Windows portability changes [2.0j] -* `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly +* '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 + '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 +* 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. @@ -1842,12 +4463,11 @@ packages, see ./old/*/NEWS. ======================================================================== -Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software -Foundation, Inc. +Copyright (C) 2001-2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document -under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or +under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover -Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free -Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution. +Texts. A copy of the license is included in the "GNU Free +Documentation License" file as part of this distribution. |