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 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
69 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
71 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
73 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
74 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
76 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
77 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
79 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
80 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
81 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
82 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
84 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
85 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
86 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
88 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
89 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
91 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
92 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
94 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
95 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
97 ** Improved robustness
99 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
100 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
103 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
107 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
109 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
110 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
111 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
113 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
114 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
117 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
121 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
122 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
124 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
125 support but with insufficient /proc support.
127 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
128 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
130 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
131 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
132 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
133 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
134 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
135 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
137 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
138 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
141 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
142 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
144 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
147 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
148 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
149 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
151 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
152 directory is unreadable.
154 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
155 Before it would print nothing.
157 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
161 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
162 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
163 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
165 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
166 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
167 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
168 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
171 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
175 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
176 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
177 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
178 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
179 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
180 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
181 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
183 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
184 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
185 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
186 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
187 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
188 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
189 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
190 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
192 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
193 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
194 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
197 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
201 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
202 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
204 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
205 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
206 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
208 ** Improved robustness
210 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
211 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
212 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
215 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
219 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
220 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
221 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
222 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
223 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
225 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
229 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
232 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
236 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
237 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
238 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
239 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
241 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
242 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
244 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
245 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
246 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
249 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
251 ** Improved robustness
253 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
254 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
256 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
257 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
258 or NFS-mounted partition.
260 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
261 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
265 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
266 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
267 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
268 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
269 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
270 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
272 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
273 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
275 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
276 or neglect to report file removal.
278 For the "groups" command:
280 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
281 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
283 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
285 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
287 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
291 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
292 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
295 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
297 ** Changes in behavior
299 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
300 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
301 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
302 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
304 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
305 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
306 a final `./' or `../' component.
308 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
309 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
312 ** Infrastructure changes
314 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
315 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
316 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
317 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
321 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
324 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
325 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
326 dirent.d_type support.
328 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
329 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
331 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
332 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
333 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
334 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
337 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
339 ** Changes in behavior
341 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
345 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
346 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
350 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
351 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
352 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
354 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
355 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
357 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
358 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
360 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
362 ** Improved robustness
364 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
365 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
366 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
368 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
369 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
372 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
373 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
375 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
376 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
378 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
379 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
381 ** Changes in behavior
383 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
384 where the two are distinct.
386 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
387 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
388 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
389 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
390 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
391 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
392 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
393 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
394 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
395 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
396 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
397 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
398 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
399 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
400 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
401 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
402 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
404 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
405 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
406 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
408 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
409 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
410 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
411 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
414 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
415 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
419 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
420 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
421 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
422 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
424 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
425 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
426 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
428 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
429 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
430 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
431 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
432 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
435 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
436 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
438 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
439 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
440 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
441 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
443 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
444 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
445 successful and the output is easier to parse.
447 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
448 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
449 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
450 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
452 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
453 and sticky) with the -m option.
455 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
456 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
457 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
458 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
459 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
461 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
462 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
464 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
468 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
469 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
470 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
471 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
473 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
475 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
477 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
478 silently ignoring one of them.
480 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
481 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
482 containing this change was 5.92.
484 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
485 automatically newline terminated.
487 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
488 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
489 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
490 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
493 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
494 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
495 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
498 ** Scheduled for removal
500 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
501 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
503 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
504 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
505 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
506 command to unlink a directory.
508 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
509 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
510 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
511 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
515 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
516 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
517 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
518 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
519 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
520 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
524 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
525 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
527 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
529 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
530 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
531 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
533 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
534 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
537 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
538 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
540 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
541 list directories before files.
543 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
544 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
545 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
546 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
549 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
551 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
553 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
554 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
555 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
557 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
558 list of NUL-terminated file names.
562 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
563 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
564 usually printing nothing.
566 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
568 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
569 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
570 them with hard-linked directories.
572 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
573 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
574 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
576 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
577 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
578 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
580 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
583 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
584 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
586 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
587 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
589 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
590 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
592 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
593 all command-line arguments.
595 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
597 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
599 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
600 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
602 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
604 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
605 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
606 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
607 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
608 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
610 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
611 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
613 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
614 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
615 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
616 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
618 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
620 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
624 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
625 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
627 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
628 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
630 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
631 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
633 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
634 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
636 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
637 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
639 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
641 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
642 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
643 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
646 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
648 ** Build-related bug fixes
650 installing .mo files would fail
653 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
657 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
659 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
662 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
666 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
667 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
671 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
673 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
674 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
676 ** Deprecated options
678 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
679 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
681 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
685 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
687 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
688 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
689 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
690 conforming to older POSIX versions.
692 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
695 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
701 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
706 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
708 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
710 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
711 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
712 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
714 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
715 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
716 problematic usages. These include:
718 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
719 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
720 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
721 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
722 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
723 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
724 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
725 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
726 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
728 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
729 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
731 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
732 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
733 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
734 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
736 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
737 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
738 between binary and text files.
740 The following programs now always use text input/output:
744 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
748 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
749 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
752 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
754 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
755 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
757 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
758 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
759 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
761 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
763 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
765 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
766 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
767 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
771 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
773 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
774 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
776 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
777 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
778 blocks until F contains N blocks.
782 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
783 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
787 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
788 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
789 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
793 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
794 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
798 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
800 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
802 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
806 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
807 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
808 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
810 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
811 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
812 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
813 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
814 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
816 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
820 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
821 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
822 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
824 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
826 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
827 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
828 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
829 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
831 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
833 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
834 rather than silently wrapping around.
836 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
837 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
839 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
840 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
842 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
843 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
844 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
847 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
849 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
851 ** Improved robustness
853 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
854 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
855 no matter how large the result.
857 ** Improved portability
859 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
860 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
862 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
864 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
865 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
866 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
868 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
869 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
873 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
874 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
876 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
878 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
879 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
880 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
881 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
883 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
884 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
886 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
887 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
888 categories if not specified by dircolors.
890 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
892 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
893 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
895 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
896 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
898 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
900 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
901 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
903 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
904 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
906 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
907 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
908 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
910 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
912 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
914 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
918 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
920 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
921 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
922 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
924 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
925 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
927 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
928 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
929 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
931 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
932 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
934 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
935 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
936 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
937 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
939 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
940 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
942 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
943 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
944 the file system does not support it.
946 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
948 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
949 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
951 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
953 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
954 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
956 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
957 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
958 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
959 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
961 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
962 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
965 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
966 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
967 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
968 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
970 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
971 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
972 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
973 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
975 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
976 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
978 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
980 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
981 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
982 reporting incorrect results.
986 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
987 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
989 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
992 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
994 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
995 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
997 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
998 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
1000 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
1003 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
1004 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
1005 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
1006 the file name does not look like a page range.
1008 printf has several changes:
1010 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
1011 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1013 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1014 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1015 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1017 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1018 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1021 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1022 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1024 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1025 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1027 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1029 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1030 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1032 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1034 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1036 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1037 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1038 when first encountering the directory.
1042 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1043 output; POSIX requires this.
1045 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1046 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1048 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1050 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1051 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1053 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1054 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1056 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1057 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1058 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1059 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1060 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1061 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1062 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1064 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1065 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1066 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1068 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1069 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1071 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1073 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1075 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1076 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1077 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1078 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1080 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1084 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1085 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1086 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1087 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1088 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1090 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1091 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1092 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1094 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1095 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1097 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1098 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1100 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1101 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1102 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1103 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1104 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1106 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1107 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1109 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1110 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1112 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1114 nocreat do not create the output file
1115 excl fail if the output file already exists
1116 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1117 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1119 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1121 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1122 direct use direct I/O for data
1123 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1124 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1125 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1126 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1127 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1129 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1131 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1132 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1135 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1136 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1137 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1138 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1139 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1140 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1142 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1143 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1145 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1148 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1150 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1152 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1153 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1155 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1156 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1157 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1159 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1160 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1161 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1163 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1165 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1166 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1168 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1169 for compatibility with bash.
1171 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1173 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1174 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1175 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1176 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1178 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1179 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1181 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1182 ls supports TABSIZE.
1183 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1184 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1185 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1187 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1190 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1192 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1193 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1194 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1195 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1196 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1197 an offset, not as a file name.
1199 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1200 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1202 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1203 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1205 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1206 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1208 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1209 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1210 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1212 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1213 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1215 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1216 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1220 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1222 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1224 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1228 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1229 or more arguments between partitions.
1231 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1232 holes in the destination.
1234 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1235 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1236 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1237 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1238 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1239 terminates immediately.
1241 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1243 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1245 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1246 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1247 not the empty string.
1249 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1250 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1254 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1255 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1256 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1259 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1266 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1270 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1271 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1273 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1274 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1276 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1277 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1278 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1281 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1285 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1286 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1288 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1289 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1291 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1292 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1293 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1295 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1297 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1300 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1302 ** Configuration option
1304 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1305 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1309 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1310 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1314 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1315 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1316 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1319 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1320 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1321 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1322 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1323 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1324 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1325 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1328 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1332 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1333 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1334 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1336 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1337 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1339 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1341 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1342 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1343 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1344 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1346 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1348 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1349 not just the ones that reference directories
1351 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1352 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1354 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1355 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1356 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1358 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1359 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1360 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1361 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1362 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1363 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1365 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1370 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1371 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1373 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1375 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1377 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1379 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1380 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1382 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1383 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1385 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1387 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1391 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1393 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1395 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1396 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1397 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1398 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1399 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1401 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1402 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1404 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1405 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1407 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1408 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1410 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1411 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1412 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1416 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1417 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1418 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1419 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1420 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1421 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1422 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1423 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1424 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1425 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1426 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1427 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1428 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1429 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1431 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1433 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1434 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1436 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1438 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1440 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1441 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1443 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1445 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1446 without a trailing newline.
1448 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1449 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1451 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1454 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1458 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1460 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1462 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1463 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1464 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1465 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1467 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1469 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1470 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1471 be printed without leading spaces.
1473 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1474 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1479 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1480 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1481 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1483 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1485 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1486 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1488 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1489 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1491 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1492 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1494 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1496 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1498 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1500 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1501 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1503 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1505 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1507 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1508 byte offsets are specified.
1511 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1514 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1517 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1518 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1519 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1520 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1521 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1522 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1523 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1524 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1525 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1526 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1527 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1528 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1529 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1530 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1531 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1532 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1533 directory where M has write access.
1534 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1535 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1536 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1539 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1540 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1541 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1542 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1543 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1544 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1545 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1546 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1547 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1548 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1549 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1550 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1551 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1552 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1553 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1554 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1555 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1556 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1557 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1558 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1559 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1560 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1561 appeared one additional time.
1563 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1564 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1565 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1566 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1569 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1570 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1571 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1572 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1573 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1574 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1575 if there were more than 338.
1577 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1578 - false --help now exits nonzero
1581 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1582 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1583 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1584 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1587 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1588 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1589 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1590 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1591 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1594 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1595 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1596 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1597 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1598 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1599 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1600 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1603 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1604 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1605 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1606 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1607 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1608 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1610 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1611 under certain unusual conditions
1612 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1613 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1616 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1617 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1618 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1619 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1620 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1621 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1622 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1623 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1624 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1625 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1626 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1627 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1628 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1629 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1630 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1631 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1634 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1635 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1638 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1639 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1640 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1641 involving hard-linked directories
1642 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1643 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1644 character-special and block files
1647 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1648 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1649 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1650 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1651 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1652 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1653 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1654 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1655 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1657 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1658 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1659 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1660 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1661 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1662 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1663 specified on the command line.
1664 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1665 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1666 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1667 the first file untouched.
1668 * readlink: new program
1669 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1670 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1671 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1672 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1673 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1674 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1677 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1678 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1679 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1680 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1681 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1682 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1683 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1684 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1685 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1686 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1687 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1688 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1690 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1691 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1692 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1694 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1695 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1696 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1697 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1698 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1699 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1700 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1701 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1704 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1705 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1708 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1709 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1710 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1711 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1712 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1713 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1714 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1717 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1718 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1720 ========================================================================
1721 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1722 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1725 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1727 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1728 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1729 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1730 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1731 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1732 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1733 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1734 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1735 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1736 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1737 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1738 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1740 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1741 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1742 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1743 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1745 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1748 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1750 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1751 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1752 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1753 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1754 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1755 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1756 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1759 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1760 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1761 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1762 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1763 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1764 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1765 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1766 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1767 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1768 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1769 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1770 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1771 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1772 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1773 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1774 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1776 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1777 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1779 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1780 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1781 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1782 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1783 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1784 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1786 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1787 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1788 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1789 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1790 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1791 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1792 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1794 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1795 the source files in the following example:
1796 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1797 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1798 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1799 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1800 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1801 links between source files with --preserve=links
1802 * cp accepts new options:
1803 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1804 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1805 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1806 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1807 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1808 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1809 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1810 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1811 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1813 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1814 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1815 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1816 even though it's older than dest.
1817 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1818 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1819 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1820 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1821 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1823 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1824 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1825 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1826 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1827 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1828 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1829 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1831 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1832 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1833 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1835 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1836 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1837 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1838 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1839 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1840 This is the default.
1842 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1843 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1844 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1845 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1846 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1848 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1851 ========================================================================
1852 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1853 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1856 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1857 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1859 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1860 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1861 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1862 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1863 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1865 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1866 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1867 that specifies a non-directory
1870 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1871 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1872 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1873 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1874 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1875 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1876 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1877 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1878 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1879 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1880 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1881 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1882 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1883 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1884 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1885 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1886 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1887 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1888 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1889 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1890 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1891 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1892 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1893 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1895 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1896 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1897 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1899 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1901 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1902 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1904 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1905 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1906 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1907 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1908 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1910 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1911 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1912 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1913 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1914 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1916 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1918 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1919 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1920 * still more portability fixes
1921 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1922 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1924 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1926 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1928 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1930 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1931 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1932 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1933 there is any time remaining
1934 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1936 ========================================================================
1937 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1938 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1940 This package began as the union of the following:
1941 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1943 ========================================================================
1945 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1948 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1949 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
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