1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
2 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-08):
6 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
7 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
8 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
10 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
11 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
13 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
15 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
16 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
17 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
18 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
20 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
22 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
23 not just the ones that reference directories
25 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
26 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
28 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
29 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
30 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
32 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
33 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
34 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
35 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
36 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
37 ragged when a datum was too wide.
41 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
42 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
44 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
46 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
48 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
50 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
51 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
53 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
54 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
56 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
60 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
62 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
64 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
65 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
66 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
67 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
68 resolution is the best we can do right now.
70 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
71 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
73 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
74 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
76 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
77 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
79 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
80 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
81 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
85 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
86 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
87 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
88 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
89 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
90 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
91 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
92 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
93 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
94 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
95 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
96 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
97 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
98 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
100 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
102 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
103 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
105 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
107 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
109 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
110 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
112 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
114 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
115 without a trailing newline.
117 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
118 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
120 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
123 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
127 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
129 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
131 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
132 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
133 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
134 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
136 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
138 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
139 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
140 be printed without leading spaces.
142 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
143 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
148 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
149 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
150 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
152 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
154 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
155 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
157 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
158 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
160 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
161 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
163 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
165 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
167 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
169 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
170 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
172 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
174 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
176 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
177 byte offsets are specified.
180 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
183 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
186 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
187 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
188 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
189 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
190 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
191 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
192 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
193 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
194 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
195 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
196 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
197 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
198 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
199 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
200 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
201 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
202 directory where M has write access.
203 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
204 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
205 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
208 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
209 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
210 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
211 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
212 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
213 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
214 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
215 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
216 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
217 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
218 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
219 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
220 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
221 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
222 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
223 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
224 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
225 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
226 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
227 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
228 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
229 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
230 appeared one additional time.
232 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
233 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
234 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
235 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
238 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
239 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
240 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
241 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
242 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
243 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
244 if there were more than 338.
246 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
247 - false --help now exits nonzero
250 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
251 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
252 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
253 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
256 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
257 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
258 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
259 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
260 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
263 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
264 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
265 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
266 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
267 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
268 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
269 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
272 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
273 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
274 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
275 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
276 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
277 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
279 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
280 under certain unusual conditions
281 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
282 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
285 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
286 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
287 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
288 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
289 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
290 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
291 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
292 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
293 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
294 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
295 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
296 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
297 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
298 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
299 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
300 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
303 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
304 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
307 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
308 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
309 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
310 involving hard-linked directories
311 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
312 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
313 character-special and block files
316 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
317 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
318 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
319 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
320 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
321 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
322 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
323 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
324 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
326 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
327 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
328 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
329 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
330 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
331 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
332 specified on the command line.
333 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
334 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
335 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
336 the first file untouched.
337 * readlink: new program
338 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
339 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
340 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
341 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
342 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
343 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
346 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
347 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
348 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
349 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
350 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
351 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
352 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
353 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
354 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
355 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
356 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
357 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
359 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
360 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
361 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
363 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
364 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
365 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
366 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
367 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
368 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
369 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
370 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
373 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
374 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
377 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
378 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
379 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
380 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
381 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
382 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
383 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
386 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
387 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
389 ========================================================================
390 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
391 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
394 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
396 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
397 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
398 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
399 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
400 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
401 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
402 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
403 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
404 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
405 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
406 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
407 The old options will continue to work for a while.
409 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
410 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
411 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
412 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
414 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
417 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
419 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
420 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
421 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
422 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
423 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
424 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
425 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
428 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
429 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
430 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
431 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
432 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
433 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
434 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
435 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
436 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
437 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
438 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
439 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
440 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
441 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
442 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
443 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
445 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
446 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
448 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
449 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
450 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
451 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
452 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
453 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
455 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
456 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
457 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
458 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
459 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
460 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
461 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
463 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
464 the source files in the following example:
465 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
466 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
467 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
468 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
469 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
470 links between source files with --preserve=links
471 * cp accepts new options:
472 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
473 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
474 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
475 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
476 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
477 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
478 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
479 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
480 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
482 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
483 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
484 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
485 even though it's older than dest.
486 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
487 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
488 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
489 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
490 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
492 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
493 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
494 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
495 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
496 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
497 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
498 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
500 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
501 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
502 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
504 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
505 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
506 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
507 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
508 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
511 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
512 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
513 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
514 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
515 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
517 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
520 ========================================================================
521 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
522 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
525 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
526 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
528 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
529 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
530 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
531 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
532 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
534 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
535 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
536 that specifies a non-directory
539 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
540 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
541 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
542 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
543 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
544 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
545 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
546 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
547 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
548 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
549 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
550 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
551 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
552 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
553 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
554 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
555 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
556 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
557 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
558 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
559 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
560 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
561 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
562 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
564 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
565 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
566 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
568 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
570 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
571 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
573 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
574 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
575 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
576 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
577 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
579 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
580 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
581 required support; from Bruno Haible.
582 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
583 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
585 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
587 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
588 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
589 * still more portability fixes
590 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
591 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
593 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
595 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
597 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
599 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
600 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
601 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
602 there is any time remaining
603 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
605 ========================================================================
606 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
607 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
609 This package began as the union of the following:
610 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.