1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
7 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
8 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
10 ** Changes in behavior
12 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
13 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
15 tr now warns about an unescaped backslash at end of string.
16 The tr from coreutils-5.2.1 and earlier would fail for such usage,
17 and Solaris' tr ignores that final byte.
21 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
23 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
24 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
25 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
27 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
28 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
29 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
34 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
35 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
36 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
37 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
39 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
40 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
41 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
42 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
43 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
44 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
47 ** Remove deprecated options
49 df no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
50 du no longer accepts the --kilobytes or --megabytes options.
51 ls no longer accepts the --kilobytes option.
52 ptx longer accepts the --copyright option.
53 who no longer accepts -i or --idle.
57 cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
58 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
59 longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
60 components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
61 d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
62 destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
63 copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
64 to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
65 doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
66 the destination is a symlink.
68 "cp -i --update older newer" no longer prompts; same for mv
70 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
71 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
73 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
75 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
76 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
78 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
79 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
81 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
82 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
83 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
84 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
86 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
87 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
88 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
90 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
91 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
93 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
94 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
96 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
97 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
99 ** Improved robustness
101 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
102 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
105 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
109 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
111 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
112 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
113 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
115 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
116 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
119 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
123 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
124 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
126 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
127 support but with insufficient /proc support.
129 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
130 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
132 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
133 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
134 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
135 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
136 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
137 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
139 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
140 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
143 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
144 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
146 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
149 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
150 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
151 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
153 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
154 directory is unreadable.
156 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
157 Before it would print nothing.
159 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
163 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
164 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
165 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
167 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
168 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
169 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
170 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
173 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
177 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
178 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
179 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
180 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
181 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
182 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
183 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
185 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
186 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
187 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
188 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
189 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
190 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
191 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
192 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
194 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
195 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
196 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
199 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
203 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
204 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
206 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
207 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
208 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
210 ** Improved robustness
212 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
213 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
214 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
217 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
221 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
222 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
223 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
224 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
225 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
227 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
231 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
234 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
238 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
239 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
240 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
241 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
243 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
244 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
246 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
247 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
248 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
251 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
253 ** Improved robustness
255 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
256 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
258 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
259 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
260 or NFS-mounted partition.
262 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
263 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
267 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
268 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
269 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
270 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
271 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
272 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
274 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
275 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
277 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
278 or neglect to report file removal.
280 For the "groups" command:
282 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
283 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
285 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
287 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
289 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
293 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
294 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
297 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
299 ** Changes in behavior
301 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
302 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
303 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
304 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
306 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
307 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
308 a final `./' or `../' component.
310 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
311 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
314 ** Infrastructure changes
316 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
317 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
318 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
319 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
323 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
326 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
327 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
328 dirent.d_type support.
330 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
331 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
333 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
334 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
335 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
336 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
339 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
341 ** Changes in behavior
343 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
347 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
348 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
352 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
353 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
354 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
356 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
357 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
359 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
360 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
362 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
364 ** Improved robustness
366 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
367 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
368 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
370 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
371 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
374 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
375 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
377 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
378 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
380 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
381 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
383 ** Changes in behavior
385 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
386 where the two are distinct.
388 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
389 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
390 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
391 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
392 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
393 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
394 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
395 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
396 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
397 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
398 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
399 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
400 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
401 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
402 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
403 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
404 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
406 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
407 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
408 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
410 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
411 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
412 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
413 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
416 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
417 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
421 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
422 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
423 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
424 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
426 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
427 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
428 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
430 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
431 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
432 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
433 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
434 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
437 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
438 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
440 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
441 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
442 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
443 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
445 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
446 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
447 successful and the output is easier to parse.
449 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
450 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
451 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
452 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
454 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
455 and sticky) with the -m option.
457 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
458 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
459 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
460 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
461 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
463 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
464 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
466 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
470 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
471 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
472 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
473 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
475 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
477 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
479 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
480 silently ignoring one of them.
482 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
483 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
484 containing this change was 5.92.
486 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
487 automatically newline terminated.
489 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
490 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
491 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
492 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
495 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
496 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
497 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
500 ** Scheduled for removal
502 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
503 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
505 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
506 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
507 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
508 command to unlink a directory.
510 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
511 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
512 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
513 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
517 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
518 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
519 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
520 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
521 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
522 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
526 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
527 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
529 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
531 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
532 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
533 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
535 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
536 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
539 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
540 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
542 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
543 list directories before files.
545 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
546 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
547 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
548 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
551 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
553 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
555 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
556 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
557 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
559 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
560 list of NUL-terminated file names.
564 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
565 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
566 usually printing nothing.
568 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
570 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
571 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
572 them with hard-linked directories.
574 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
575 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
576 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
578 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
579 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
580 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
582 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
585 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
586 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
588 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
589 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
591 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
592 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
594 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
595 all command-line arguments.
597 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
599 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
601 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
602 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
604 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
606 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
607 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
608 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
609 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
610 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
612 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
613 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
615 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
616 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
617 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
618 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
620 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
622 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
626 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
627 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
629 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
630 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
632 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
633 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
635 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
636 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
638 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
639 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
641 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
643 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
644 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
645 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
648 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
650 ** Build-related bug fixes
652 installing .mo files would fail
655 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
659 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
661 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
664 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
668 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
669 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
673 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
675 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
676 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
678 ** Deprecated options
680 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
681 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
683 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
687 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
689 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
690 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
691 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
692 conforming to older POSIX versions.
694 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
697 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
703 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
708 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
710 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
712 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
713 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
714 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
716 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
717 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
718 problematic usages. These include:
720 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
721 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
722 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
723 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
724 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
725 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
726 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
727 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
728 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
730 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
731 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
733 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
734 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
735 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
736 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
738 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
739 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
740 between binary and text files.
742 The following programs now always use text input/output:
746 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
750 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
751 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
754 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
756 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
757 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
759 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
760 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
761 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
763 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
765 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
767 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
768 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
769 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
773 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
775 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
776 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
778 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
779 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
780 blocks until F contains N blocks.
784 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
785 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
789 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
790 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
791 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
795 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
796 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
800 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
802 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
804 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
808 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
809 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
810 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
812 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
813 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
814 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
815 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
816 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
818 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
822 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
823 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
824 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
826 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
828 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
829 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
830 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
831 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
833 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
835 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
836 rather than silently wrapping around.
838 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
839 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
841 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
842 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
844 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
845 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
846 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
849 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
851 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
853 ** Improved robustness
855 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
856 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
857 no matter how large the result.
859 ** Improved portability
861 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
862 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
864 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
866 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
867 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
868 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
870 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
871 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
875 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
876 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
878 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
880 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
881 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
882 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
883 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
885 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
886 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
888 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
889 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
890 categories if not specified by dircolors.
892 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
894 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
895 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
897 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
898 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
900 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
902 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
903 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
905 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
906 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
908 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
909 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
910 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
912 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
914 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
916 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
920 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
922 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
923 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
924 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
926 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
927 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
929 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
930 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
931 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
933 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
934 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
936 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
937 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
938 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
939 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
941 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
942 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
944 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
945 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
946 the file system does not support it.
948 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
950 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
951 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
953 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
955 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
956 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
958 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
959 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
960 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
961 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
963 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
964 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
967 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
968 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
969 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
970 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
972 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
973 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
974 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
975 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
977 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
978 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
980 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
982 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
983 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
984 reporting incorrect results.
988 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
989 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
991 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
994 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
996 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
997 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
999 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
1000 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1002 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1005 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1006 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1007 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1008 the file name does not look like a page range.
1010 printf has several changes:
1012 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1013 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1015 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1016 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1017 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1019 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1020 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1023 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1024 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1026 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1027 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1029 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1031 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1032 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1034 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1036 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1038 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1039 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1040 when first encountering the directory.
1044 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1045 output; POSIX requires this.
1047 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1048 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1050 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1052 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1053 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1055 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1056 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1058 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1059 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1060 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1061 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1062 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1063 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1064 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1066 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1067 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1068 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1070 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1071 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1073 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1075 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1077 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1078 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1079 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1080 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1082 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1086 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1087 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1088 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1089 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1090 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1092 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1093 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1094 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1096 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1097 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1099 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1100 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1102 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1103 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1104 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1105 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1106 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1108 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1109 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1111 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1112 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1114 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1116 nocreat do not create the output file
1117 excl fail if the output file already exists
1118 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1119 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1121 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1123 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1124 direct use direct I/O for data
1125 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1126 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1127 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1128 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1129 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1131 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1133 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1134 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1137 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1138 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1139 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1140 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1141 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1142 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1144 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1145 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1147 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1150 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1152 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1154 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1155 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1157 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1158 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1159 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1161 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1162 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1163 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1165 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1167 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1168 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1170 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1171 for compatibility with bash.
1173 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1175 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1176 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1177 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1178 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1180 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1181 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1183 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1184 ls supports TABSIZE.
1185 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1186 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1187 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1189 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1192 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1194 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1195 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1196 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1197 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1198 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1199 an offset, not as a file name.
1201 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1202 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1204 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1205 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1207 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1208 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1210 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1211 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1212 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1214 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1215 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1217 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1218 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1222 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1224 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1226 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1230 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1231 or more arguments between partitions.
1233 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1234 holes in the destination.
1236 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1237 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1238 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1239 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1240 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1241 terminates immediately.
1243 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1245 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1247 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1248 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1249 not the empty string.
1251 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1252 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1256 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1257 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1258 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1261 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1268 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1272 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1273 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1275 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1276 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1278 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1279 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1280 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1283 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1287 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1288 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1290 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1291 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1293 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1294 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1295 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1297 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1299 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1302 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1304 ** Configuration option
1306 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1307 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1311 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1312 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1316 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1317 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1318 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1321 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1322 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1323 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1324 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1325 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1326 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1327 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1330 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1334 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1335 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1336 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1338 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1339 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1341 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1343 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1344 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1345 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1346 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1348 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1350 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1351 not just the ones that reference directories
1353 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1354 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1356 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1357 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1358 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1360 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1361 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1362 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1363 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1364 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1365 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1367 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1372 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1373 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1375 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1377 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1379 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1381 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1382 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1384 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1385 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1387 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1389 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1393 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1395 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1397 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1398 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1399 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1400 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1401 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1403 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1404 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1406 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1407 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1409 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1410 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1412 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1413 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1414 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1418 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1419 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1420 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1421 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1422 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1423 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1424 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1425 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1426 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1427 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1428 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1429 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1430 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1431 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1433 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1435 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1436 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1438 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1440 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1442 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1443 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1445 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1447 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1448 without a trailing newline.
1450 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1451 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1453 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1456 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1460 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1462 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1464 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1465 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1466 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1467 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1469 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1471 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1472 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1473 be printed without leading spaces.
1475 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1476 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1481 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1482 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1483 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1485 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1487 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1488 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1490 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1491 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1493 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1494 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1496 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1498 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1500 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1502 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1503 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1505 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1507 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1509 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1510 byte offsets are specified.
1513 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1516 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1519 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1520 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1521 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1522 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1523 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1524 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1525 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1526 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1527 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1528 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1529 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1530 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1531 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1532 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1533 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1534 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1535 directory where M has write access.
1536 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1537 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1538 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1541 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1542 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1543 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1544 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1545 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1546 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1547 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1548 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1549 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1550 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1551 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1552 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1553 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1554 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1555 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1556 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1557 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1558 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1559 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1560 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1561 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1562 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1563 appeared one additional time.
1565 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1566 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1567 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1568 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1571 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1572 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1573 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1574 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1575 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1576 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1577 if there were more than 338.
1579 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1580 - false --help now exits nonzero
1583 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1584 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1585 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1586 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1589 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1590 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1591 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1592 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1593 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1596 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1597 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1598 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1599 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1600 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1601 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1602 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1605 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1606 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1607 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1608 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1609 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1610 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1612 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1613 under certain unusual conditions
1614 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1615 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1618 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1619 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1620 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1621 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1622 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1623 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1624 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1625 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1626 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1627 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1628 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1629 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1630 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1631 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1632 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1633 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1636 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1637 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1640 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1641 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1642 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1643 involving hard-linked directories
1644 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1645 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1646 character-special and block files
1649 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1650 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1651 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1652 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1653 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1654 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1655 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1656 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1657 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1659 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1660 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1661 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1662 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1663 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1664 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1665 specified on the command line.
1666 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1667 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1668 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1669 the first file untouched.
1670 * readlink: new program
1671 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1672 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1673 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1674 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1675 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1676 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1679 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1680 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1681 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1682 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1683 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1684 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1685 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1686 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1687 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1688 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1689 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1690 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1692 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1693 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1694 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1696 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1697 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1698 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1699 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1700 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1701 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1702 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1703 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1706 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1707 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1710 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1711 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1712 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1713 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1714 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1715 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1716 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1719 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1720 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1722 ========================================================================
1723 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1724 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1727 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1729 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1730 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1731 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1732 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1733 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1734 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1735 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1736 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1737 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1738 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1739 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1740 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1742 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1743 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1744 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1745 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1747 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1750 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1752 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1753 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1754 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1755 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1756 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1757 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1758 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1761 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1762 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1763 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1764 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1765 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1766 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1767 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1768 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1769 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1770 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1771 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1772 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1773 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1774 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1775 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1776 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1778 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1779 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1781 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1782 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1783 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1784 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1785 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1786 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1788 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1789 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1790 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1791 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1792 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1793 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1794 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1796 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1797 the source files in the following example:
1798 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1799 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1800 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1801 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1802 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1803 links between source files with --preserve=links
1804 * cp accepts new options:
1805 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1806 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1807 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1808 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1809 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1810 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1811 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1812 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1813 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1815 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1816 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1817 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1818 even though it's older than dest.
1819 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1820 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1821 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1822 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1823 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1825 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1826 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1827 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1828 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1829 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1830 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1831 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1833 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1834 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1835 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1837 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1838 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1839 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1840 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1841 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1842 This is the default.
1844 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1845 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1846 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1847 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1848 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1850 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1853 ========================================================================
1854 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1855 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1858 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1859 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1861 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1862 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1863 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1864 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1865 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1867 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1868 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1869 that specifies a non-directory
1872 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1873 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1874 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1875 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1876 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1877 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1878 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1879 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1880 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1881 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1882 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1883 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1884 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1885 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1886 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1887 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1888 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1889 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1890 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1891 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1892 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1893 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1894 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1895 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1897 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1898 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1899 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1901 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1903 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1904 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1906 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1907 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1908 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1909 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1910 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1912 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1913 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1914 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1915 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1916 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1918 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1920 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1921 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1922 * still more portability fixes
1923 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1924 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1926 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1928 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1930 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1932 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1933 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1934 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1935 there is any time remaining
1936 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1938 ========================================================================
1939 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1940 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1942 This package began as the union of the following:
1943 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1945 ========================================================================
1947 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1950 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
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