1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
7 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
9 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
10 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
11 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
15 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
16 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
18 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
19 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
20 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
21 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
23 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
24 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
25 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
27 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
28 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
30 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
31 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
33 ** Improved robustness
35 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
36 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
39 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
43 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
45 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
46 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
47 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
49 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
50 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
53 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
57 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
58 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
60 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
61 support but with insufficient /proc support.
63 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
64 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
66 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
67 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
68 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
69 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
70 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
71 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
73 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
74 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
77 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
78 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
80 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
83 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
84 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
85 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
87 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
88 directory is unreadable.
90 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
91 Before it would print nothing.
93 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
97 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
98 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
99 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
101 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
102 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
103 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
104 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
107 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
111 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
112 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
113 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
114 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
115 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
116 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
117 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
119 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
120 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
121 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
122 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
123 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
124 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
125 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
126 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
128 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
129 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
130 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
133 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
137 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
138 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
140 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
141 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
142 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
144 ** Improved robustness
146 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
147 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
148 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
151 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
155 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
156 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
157 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
158 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
159 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
161 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
165 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
168 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
172 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
173 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
174 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
175 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
177 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
178 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
180 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
181 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
182 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
185 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
187 ** Improved robustness
189 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
190 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
192 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
193 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
194 or NFS-mounted partition.
196 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
197 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
201 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
202 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
203 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
204 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
205 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
206 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
208 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
209 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
211 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
212 or neglect to report file removal.
214 For the "groups" command:
216 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
217 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
219 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
221 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
223 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
227 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
228 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
231 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
233 ** Changes in behavior
235 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
236 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
237 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
238 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
240 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
241 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
242 a final `./' or `../' component.
244 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
245 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
248 ** Infrastructure changes
250 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
251 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
252 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
253 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
257 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
260 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
261 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
262 dirent.d_type support.
264 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
265 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
267 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
268 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
269 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
270 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
273 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
275 ** Changes in behavior
277 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
281 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
282 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
286 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
287 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
288 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
290 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
291 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
293 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
294 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
296 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
298 ** Improved robustness
300 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
301 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
302 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
304 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
305 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
308 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
309 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
311 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
312 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
314 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
315 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
317 ** Changes in behavior
319 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
320 where the two are distinct.
322 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
323 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
324 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
325 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
326 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
327 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
328 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
329 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
330 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
331 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
332 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
333 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
334 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
335 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
336 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
337 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
338 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
340 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
341 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
342 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
344 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
345 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
346 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
347 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
350 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
351 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
355 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
356 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
357 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
358 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
360 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
361 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
362 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
364 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
365 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
366 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
367 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
368 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
371 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
372 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
374 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
375 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
376 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
377 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
379 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
380 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
381 successful and the output is easier to parse.
383 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
384 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
385 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
386 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
388 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
389 and sticky) with the -m option.
391 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
392 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
393 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
394 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
395 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
397 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
398 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
400 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
404 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
405 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
406 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
407 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
409 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
411 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
413 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
414 silently ignoring one of them.
416 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
417 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
418 containing this change was 5.92.
420 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
421 automatically newline terminated.
423 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
424 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
425 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
426 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
429 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
430 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
431 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
434 ** Scheduled for removal
436 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
437 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
439 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
440 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
441 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
442 command to unlink a directory.
444 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
445 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
446 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
447 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
451 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
452 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
453 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
454 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
455 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
456 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
460 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
461 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
463 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
465 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
466 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
467 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
469 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
470 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
473 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
474 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
476 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
477 list directories before files.
479 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
480 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
481 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
482 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
485 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
487 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
489 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
490 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
491 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
493 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
494 list of NUL-terminated file names.
498 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
499 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
500 usually printing nothing.
502 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
504 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
505 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
506 them with hard-linked directories.
508 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
509 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
510 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
512 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
513 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
514 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
516 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
519 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
520 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
522 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
523 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
525 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
526 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
528 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
529 all command-line arguments.
531 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
533 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
535 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
536 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
538 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
540 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
541 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
542 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
543 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
544 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
546 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
547 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
549 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
550 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
551 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
552 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
554 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
556 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
560 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
561 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
563 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
564 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
566 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
567 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
569 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
570 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
572 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
573 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
575 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
577 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
578 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
579 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
582 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
584 ** Build-related bug fixes
586 installing .mo files would fail
589 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
593 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
595 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
598 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
602 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
603 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
607 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
609 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
610 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
612 ** Deprecated options
614 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
615 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
617 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
621 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
623 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
624 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
625 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
626 conforming to older POSIX versions.
628 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
631 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
637 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
642 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
644 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
646 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
647 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
648 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
650 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
651 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
652 problematic usages. These include:
654 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
655 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
656 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
657 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
658 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
659 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
660 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
661 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
662 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
664 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
665 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
667 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
668 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
669 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
670 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
672 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
673 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
674 between binary and text files.
676 The following programs now always use text input/output:
680 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
684 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
685 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
688 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
690 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
691 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
693 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
694 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
695 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
697 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
699 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
701 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
702 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
703 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
707 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
709 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
710 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
712 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
713 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
714 blocks until F contains N blocks.
718 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
719 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
723 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
724 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
725 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
729 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
730 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
734 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
736 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
738 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
742 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
743 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
744 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
746 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
747 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
748 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
749 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
750 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
752 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
756 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
757 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
758 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
760 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
762 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
763 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
764 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
765 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
767 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
769 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
770 rather than silently wrapping around.
772 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
773 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
775 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
776 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
778 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
779 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
780 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
783 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
785 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
787 ** Improved robustness
789 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
790 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
791 no matter how large the result.
793 ** Improved portability
795 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
796 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
798 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
800 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
801 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
802 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
804 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
805 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
809 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
810 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
812 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
814 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
815 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
816 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
817 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
819 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
820 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
822 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
823 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
824 categories if not specified by dircolors.
826 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
828 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
829 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
831 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
832 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
834 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
836 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
837 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
839 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
840 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
842 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
843 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
844 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
846 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
848 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
850 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
854 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
856 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
857 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
858 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
860 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
861 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
863 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
864 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
865 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
867 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
868 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
870 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
871 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
872 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
873 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
875 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
876 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
878 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
879 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
880 the file system does not support it.
882 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
884 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
885 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
887 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
889 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
890 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
892 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
893 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
894 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
895 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
897 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
898 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
901 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
902 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
903 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
904 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
906 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
907 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
908 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
909 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
911 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
912 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
914 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
916 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
917 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
918 reporting incorrect results.
922 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
923 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
925 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
928 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
930 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
931 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
933 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
934 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
936 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
939 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
940 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
941 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
942 the file name does not look like a page range.
944 printf has several changes:
946 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
947 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
949 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
950 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
951 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
953 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
954 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
957 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
958 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
960 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
961 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
963 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
965 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
966 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
968 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
970 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
972 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
973 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
974 when first encountering the directory.
978 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
979 output; POSIX requires this.
981 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
982 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
984 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
986 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
987 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
989 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
990 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
992 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
993 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
994 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
995 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
996 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
997 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
998 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1000 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1001 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1002 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1004 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1005 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1007 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1009 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1011 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1012 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1013 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1014 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1016 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1020 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1021 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1022 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1023 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1024 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1026 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1027 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1028 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1030 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1031 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1033 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1034 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1036 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1037 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1038 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1039 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1040 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1042 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1043 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1045 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1046 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1048 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1050 nocreat do not create the output file
1051 excl fail if the output file already exists
1052 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1053 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1055 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1057 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1058 direct use direct I/O for data
1059 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1060 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1061 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1062 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1063 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1065 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1067 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1068 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1071 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1072 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1073 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1074 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1075 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1076 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1078 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1079 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1081 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1084 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1086 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1088 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1089 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1091 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1092 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1093 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1095 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1096 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1097 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1099 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1101 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1102 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1104 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1105 for compatibility with bash.
1107 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1109 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1110 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1111 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1112 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1114 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1115 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1117 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1118 ls supports TABSIZE.
1119 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1120 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1121 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1123 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1126 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1128 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1129 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1130 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1131 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1132 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1133 an offset, not as a file name.
1135 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1136 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1138 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1139 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1141 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1142 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1144 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1145 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1146 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1148 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1149 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1151 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1152 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1156 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1158 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1160 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1164 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1165 or more arguments between partitions.
1167 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1168 holes in the destination.
1170 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1171 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1172 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1173 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1174 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1175 terminates immediately.
1177 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1179 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1181 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1182 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1183 not the empty string.
1185 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1186 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1190 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1191 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1192 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1195 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1202 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1206 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1207 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1209 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1210 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1212 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1213 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1214 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1217 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1221 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1222 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1224 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1225 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1227 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1228 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1229 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1231 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1233 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1236 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1238 ** Configuration option
1240 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1241 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1245 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1246 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1250 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1251 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1252 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1255 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1256 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1257 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1258 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1259 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1260 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1261 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1264 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1268 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1269 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1270 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1272 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1273 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1275 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1277 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1278 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1279 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1280 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1282 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1284 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1285 not just the ones that reference directories
1287 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1288 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1290 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1291 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1292 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1294 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1295 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1296 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1297 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1298 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1299 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1301 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1306 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1307 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1309 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1311 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1313 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1315 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1316 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1318 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1319 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1321 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1323 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1327 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1329 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1331 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1332 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1333 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1334 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1335 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1337 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1338 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1340 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1341 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1343 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1344 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1346 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1347 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1348 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1352 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1353 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1354 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1355 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1356 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1357 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1358 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1359 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1360 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1361 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1362 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1363 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1364 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1365 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1367 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1369 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1370 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1372 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1374 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1376 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1377 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1379 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1381 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1382 without a trailing newline.
1384 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1385 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1387 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1390 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1394 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1396 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1398 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1399 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1400 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1401 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1403 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1405 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1406 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1407 be printed without leading spaces.
1409 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1410 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1415 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1416 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1417 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1419 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1421 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1422 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1424 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1425 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1427 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1428 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1430 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1432 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1434 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1436 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1437 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1439 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1441 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1443 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1444 byte offsets are specified.
1447 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1450 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1453 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1454 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1455 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1456 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1457 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1458 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1459 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1460 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1461 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1462 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1463 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1464 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1465 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1466 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1467 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1468 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1469 directory where M has write access.
1470 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1471 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1472 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1475 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1476 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1477 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1478 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1479 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1480 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1481 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1482 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1483 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1484 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1485 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1486 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1487 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1488 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1489 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1490 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1491 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1492 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1493 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1494 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1495 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1496 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1497 appeared one additional time.
1499 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1500 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1501 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1502 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1505 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1506 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1507 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1508 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1509 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1510 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1511 if there were more than 338.
1513 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1514 - false --help now exits nonzero
1517 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1518 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1519 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1520 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1523 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1524 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1525 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1526 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1527 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1530 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1531 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1532 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1533 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1534 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1535 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1536 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1539 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1540 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1541 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1542 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1543 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1544 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1546 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1547 under certain unusual conditions
1548 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1549 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1552 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1553 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1554 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1555 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1556 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1557 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1558 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1559 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1560 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1561 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1562 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1563 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1564 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1565 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1566 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1567 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1570 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1571 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1574 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1575 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1576 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1577 involving hard-linked directories
1578 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1579 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1580 character-special and block files
1583 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1584 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1585 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1586 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1587 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1588 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1589 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1590 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1591 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1593 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1594 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1595 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1596 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1597 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1598 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1599 specified on the command line.
1600 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1601 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1602 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1603 the first file untouched.
1604 * readlink: new program
1605 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1606 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1607 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1608 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1609 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1610 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1613 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1614 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1615 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1616 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1617 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1618 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1619 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1620 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1621 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1622 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1623 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1624 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1626 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1627 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1628 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1630 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1631 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1632 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1633 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1634 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1635 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1636 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1637 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1640 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1641 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1644 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1645 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1646 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1647 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1648 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1649 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1650 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1653 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1654 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1656 ========================================================================
1657 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1658 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1661 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1663 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1664 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1665 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1666 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1667 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1668 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1669 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1670 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1671 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1672 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1673 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1674 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1676 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1677 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1678 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1679 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1681 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1684 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1686 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1687 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1688 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1689 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1690 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1691 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1692 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1695 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1696 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1697 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1698 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1699 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1700 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1701 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1702 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1703 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1704 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1705 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1706 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1707 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1708 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1709 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1710 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1712 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1713 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1715 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1716 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1717 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1718 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1719 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1720 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1722 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1723 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1724 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1725 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1726 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1727 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1728 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1730 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1731 the source files in the following example:
1732 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1733 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1734 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1735 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1736 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1737 links between source files with --preserve=links
1738 * cp accepts new options:
1739 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1740 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1741 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1742 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1743 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1744 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1745 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1746 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1747 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1749 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1750 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1751 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1752 even though it's older than dest.
1753 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1754 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1755 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1756 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1757 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1759 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1760 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1761 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1762 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1763 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1764 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1765 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1767 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1768 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1769 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1771 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1772 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1773 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1774 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1775 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1776 This is the default.
1778 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1779 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1780 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1781 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1782 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1784 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1787 ========================================================================
1788 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1789 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1792 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1793 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1795 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1796 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1797 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1798 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1799 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1801 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1802 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1803 that specifies a non-directory
1806 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1807 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1808 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1809 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1810 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1811 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1812 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1813 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1814 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1815 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1816 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1817 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1818 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1819 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1820 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1821 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1822 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1823 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1824 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1825 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1826 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1827 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1828 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1829 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1831 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1832 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1833 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1835 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1837 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1838 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1840 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1841 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1842 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1843 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1844 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1846 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1847 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1848 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1849 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1850 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1852 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1854 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1855 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1856 * still more portability fixes
1857 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1858 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1860 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1862 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1864 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1866 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1867 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1868 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1869 there is any time remaining
1870 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1872 ========================================================================
1873 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1874 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1876 This package began as the union of the following:
1877 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1879 ========================================================================
1881 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1884 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1885 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1886 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1887 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1888 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1889 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.