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coreutils-5.92 released [stable]


From: Jim Meyering
Subject: coreutils-5.92 released [stable]
Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2005 11:07:59 +0200

The GNU coreutils package contains the following programs:

  [ basename cat chgrp chmod chown chroot cksum comm cp csplit cut date dd
  df dir dircolors dirname du echo env expand expr factor false fmt fold
  ginstall groups head hostid hostname id join kill link ln logname ls
  md5sum mkdir mkfifo mknod mv nice nl nohup od paste pathchk pinky pr
  printenv printf ptx pwd readlink rm rmdir seq sha1sum shred sleep sort
  split stat stty su sum sync tac tail tee test touch tr true tsort tty
  uname unexpand uniq unlink uptime users vdir wc who whoami yes

The coreutils package replaces/unifies the fileutils, sh-utils, and
textutils packages.

This is a stable release.  There have been many changes in the 19
months since 5.2.1 (the previous stable release), but few regressions.
The test releases leading up to this one have been in widespread use
in large-scale installations for months without significant trouble.
For a list of changes since 5.2.1, see below.

As usual, special thanks go to Paul Eggert for his many contributions.
Thanks to everyone else who contributed changes (attributions are in
the ChangeLog files), reported problems, and helped by fielding questions
on the mailing list.

Here are the compressed sources:
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-5.92.tar.gz   (7.2MB)
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-5.92.tar.bz2   (4.6MB)

Here are the xdelta-style diffs:
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-5.91-5.92.xdelta   (152KB)

Here are the GPG detached signatures:
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-5.92.tar.gz.sig
  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-5.92.tar.bz2.sig

Here are the MD5 and SHA1 checksums:

e69b5471fd3bcc30c00db9c02166c262  coreutils-5.92.tar.gz
f2ad653731ebc9d5763be5971b4d41e0  coreutils-5.92.tar.bz2
68832a501e2b333233f132442af54c2f  coreutils-5.91-5.92.xdelta
a2b6af44c79503c40d9d7d916d4f0a07004e057f  coreutils-5.92.tar.gz
933f305183844d8a350a2294d96b73f73090717d  coreutils-5.92.tar.bz2
cdc9537c62114c02c0deae9ec12885c85f0563b0  coreutils-5.91-5.92.xdelta


*****************
How can you help?
*****************
If you're interested in lending a hand, or just want to use
the latest versions right now, you can build these programs
and run the test suite like this:

   gzip -dc coreutils-5.92.tar.gz | tar xf -
   cd coreutils-5.92
   ./configure
   make
   make -k check >& log
   grep FAIL log

Be sure to use make's -k option so that make doesn't stop
just because one of the earlier tests fails.
Please report any build problems or test failures to the
address@hidden mailing list.
There are detailed instructions in the `Reporting bugs:' section
of the README file.

For further reading, see the coreutils home page
  http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/
and the FAQ list:
  http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/


*****************
NEWS
*****************
==============================================================================
* Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]

** Bug fixes

  chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit

  dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters


==============================================================================
* Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]

** Bug fixes

  "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
  directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.

** Removed options

  tail's --allow-missing option has been removed.  Use --retry instead.

  stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
  Use --dereference (-L) instead.

** Deprecated options

  Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
  that the long-named option is deprecated.  Use `-k' instead.

  du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
  Use -m instead.


==============================================================================
* Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]

** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
  conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001.  The following changes apply only
  when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
  conforming to older POSIX versions.

  The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:

    date -I
    expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
    fold -WIDTH
    head -NUM
    join -j FIELD
    join -j1 FIELD
    join -j2 FIELD
    join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
    nice -NUM
    od -w
    pr -S
    split -NUM
    tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]

  The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:

    date -I TIMESPEC  (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
    od -w WIDTH       (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
    pr -S STRING      (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)

  A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
  being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
  problematic usages.  These include:

    Problematic       Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
       usage            whether you prefer the behavior of:
                      POSIX 1003.2-1992    POSIX 1003.1-2001
    sort +4           sort -k 5            sort ./+4
    tail +4           tail -n +4           tail ./+4
    tail - f          tail f               [see (*) below]
    tail -c 4         tail -c 10 ./4       tail -c4
    touch 12312359 f  touch -t 12312359 f  touch ./12312359 f
    uniq +4           uniq -s 4            uniq ./+4

    (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
    standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".

  These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
  Austin Group standardization meeting.  For more details, please see
  "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
  Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.

** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
  These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
  between binary and text files.

  The following programs now always use text input/output:

    expand unexpand

  The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:

    cp install mv shred

  The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
  data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.

    head tac tail tee tr
    (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)

  cat's --binary or -B option has been removed.  It existed only on
  MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.

  md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
  standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
  binary if they actually read them in text mode.

** Changes for better conformance to POSIX

  cp, ln, mv, rm changes:

    Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
    For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
    with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".

  dd changes:

    On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.

    On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
    signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.

    If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
    then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
    blocks until F contains N blocks.

  fold changes:

    When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
    "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".

  ls changes:

    -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
    --indicator-style=slash.  Use --file-type or
    --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.

  nice changes:

    Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
    in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).

  nohup changes:

    nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.

    nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.

    nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.

  pathchk changes:

    It now rejects the empty name in the normal case.  That is,
    "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
    current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.

    The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
    as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
    <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
    It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
    <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.

    The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.

** Bug fixes

  chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
  permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
  strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1.  These bugs have been fixed.

  csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB

  dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
  rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
  time-of-day is changed while dd is running.  Also, it avoids
  using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.

  expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.

  expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
  rather than silently wrapping around.

  ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
  foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.

  "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
  and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.

  "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
  directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
  to return to its initial working directory.  Similarly for "install -D
  file /tmp/a/b/file".

  "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.

  stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist

** Improved robustness

  Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
  so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
  no matter how large the result.

** Improved portability

  hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
  and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.

  nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.

  `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
  file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
  coreutils' old configure-time run-test.

  sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
  in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.

** New features

  chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
  would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.

  cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated

  date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC.  The old --iso-8602 (-I)
  option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
  date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
  specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.

  dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
  effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.

  dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
  OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
  categories if not specified by dircolors.

  du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE

  join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
  join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",

  ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
  when none of the listed files has an ACL.

  md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.

  If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
  prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.

  "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
  "-FOO" is not a valid option.

  stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
  stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
  stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS

  "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".

  uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.


==============================================================================
* Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]

** Bug fixes

  Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:

    Do not affect symbolic links by default.
    Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
    To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).

    --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
    and/or group match those of an affected symlink.

    Check for incompatible options.  When -R and --dereference are
    both used, then either -H or -L must also be used.  When -R and -h
    are both used, then -P must be in effect.

    -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
    If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.

    Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
    and group already have the desired value.  This optimization was
    incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
    special permission bits, as POSIX requires.

    "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
    without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.

    Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
    recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
    the file system does not support it.

  chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".

  chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
  used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.

  cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.

  dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
  "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.

  du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
  directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
  Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
  chown, chmod, and chgrp.

  du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
  against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
  final component.

  echo now conforms to POSIX better.  It supports the \0ooo syntax for
  octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately.  If
  POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
  outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.

  expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better.  They check for
  blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
  non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs.  Unexpand now
  preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.

  "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
  instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.

  ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.

  md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
  lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
  reporting incorrect results.

  Fixes for "nice":

    If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
    it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.

    It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
    happens to be -1.

    It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.

    It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
    closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.

  pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
  now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.

  `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
  either -s or -w.

  pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
  detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
  pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
  the file name does not look like a page range.

  printf has several changes:

    It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
    can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.

    On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
    specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
    (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).

    The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
    like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
    printf function.

  ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
  and --gap-size=N (-g) options.

  mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
  operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.

  rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
  to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.

  rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.

  rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.

  "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
  for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
  when first encountering the directory.

  "sort" fixes:

    "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
    output; POSIX requires this.

    An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
    mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.

    "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.

  tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
  /proc/modules.  Before, it would produce no output for such a file.

  tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
  Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.

  "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos.  With no operands,
  tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
  When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
  modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
  more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
  than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
  and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.

  tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
  To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
  Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".

  "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
  "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.

  tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".

  who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.

  The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
  accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
  options may be added later.  Formerly they accepted unknown options
  as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".

    basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes

** New features

  For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
  merely because the input happens to come from a pipe.  As a result,
  some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
  are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
  done reading it.  This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.

  When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
  commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
  the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".

  pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
  is longer than PATH_MAX.

  cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
  and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.

  cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
  destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
  preexisting time stamp.  This saves work in the common case when
  copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
  system with a coarse time stamp resolution.

  cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
  selected bytes, characters, or fields.

  dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
  transfer rate.  The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.

  dd has new conversions for the conv= option:

    nocreat   do not create the output file
    excl      fail if the output file already exists
    fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
    fsync     likewise, but also write metadata

  dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:

    append    append mode (makes sense for output file only)
    direct    use direct I/O for data
    dsync     use synchronized I/O for data
    sync      likewise, but also for metadata
    nonblock  use non-blocking I/O
    nofollow  do not follow symlinks
    noctty    do not assign controlling terminal from file

  stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.

  With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
  If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
  string.

  'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
  BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
  DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
  Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
  values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
  This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.

  du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
  list of NUL-terminated file names.

  Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
  changed as follows:

    Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.

    Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.

    Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
    prefixed by `@'.  For example, address@hidden' represents 1970-01-01 
00:05:21 UTC.

    Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
    and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC".  For example,
    "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".

    Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
    the environment only while that date is being processed.  For example,
    the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:

      TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'

  `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
  nanosecond-resolution time stamps.

  echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
  for compatibility with bash.

  ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.

  ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
  --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
  This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
  "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".

  In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
  so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:

    false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
    ls supports TABSIZE.
    pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
    printf supports \u, \U, \x.
    tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.

  The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
  pwd, sync, and yes.

  `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:

    The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
    even without --traditional.  This is a change in behavior if there
    are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
    there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
    For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
    an offset, not as a file name.

    -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
    Use -x or -t x2 instead.

    -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
    -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).

    -s is now equivalent to -t d2.  The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
    option has been renamed to "-S NUM".

    The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
    rather than two-byte int.  This makes a difference only on hosts like
    Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.

  The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
  consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.

** Removed features

  md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.

  tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.

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