GNU coreutils NEWS                                    -*- outline -*-

* 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 noticable 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

  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]

** 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 &nbsp) 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

  cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions

  The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
  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)
  no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.

* Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]

** Bug fixes

  chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
  Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.

  chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
  support but with insufficient /proc support.

  "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
  a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).

  "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
  too-generous permissions in some cases.  For example, when copying a
  directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
  temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
  users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory.  Fix
  similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.

  cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
  more file arguments.  This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
  in coreutils-5.3.0.

  dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
  operands, as POSIX and tradition require.

  "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux.  Introduced in
  coreutils-6.0.

  A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
  a reasonable diagnostic.  Before, it would print this:
  "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".

  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 an 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
  program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
  This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.

  sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
  is printed.  Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
  --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
  --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.