1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 6.0-cvs (????-??-??) [unstable]
7 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
8 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
9 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
10 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
12 ** Scheduled for removal
14 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
15 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
16 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
17 command to unlink a directory.
19 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
20 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
21 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
22 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
26 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
27 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
28 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
29 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
33 sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp function, and hence
34 are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32, on the maximum
35 number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20, SunOS 4.1.4,
36 Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
39 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
43 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
44 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
46 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
47 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
49 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
50 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
52 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
53 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
55 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
56 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
58 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
60 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
61 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
62 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
65 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
67 ** Build-related bug fixes
69 installing .mo files would fail
72 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
76 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
78 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
80 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
84 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
85 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
89 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
91 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
92 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
96 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
97 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
99 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
103 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
105 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
106 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
107 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
108 conforming to older POSIX versions.
110 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
113 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
119 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
124 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
126 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
128 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
129 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
130 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
132 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
133 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
134 problematic usages. These include:
136 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
137 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
138 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
139 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
140 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
141 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
142 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
143 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
144 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
146 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
147 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
149 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
150 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
151 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
152 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
154 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
155 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
156 between binary and text files.
158 The following programs now always use text input/output:
162 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
166 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
167 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
170 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
172 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
173 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
175 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
176 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
177 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
179 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
181 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
183 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
184 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
185 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
189 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
191 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
192 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
194 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
195 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
196 blocks until F contains N blocks.
200 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
201 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
205 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
206 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
207 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
211 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
212 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
216 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
218 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
220 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
224 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
225 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
226 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
228 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
229 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
230 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
231 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
232 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
234 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
238 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
239 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
240 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
242 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
244 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
245 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
246 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
247 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
249 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
251 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
252 rather than silently wrapping around.
254 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
255 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
257 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
258 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
260 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
261 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
262 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
265 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
267 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
269 ** Improved robustness
271 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
272 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
273 no matter how large the result.
275 ** Improved portability
277 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
278 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
280 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
282 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
283 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
284 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
286 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
287 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
291 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
292 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
294 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
296 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
297 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
298 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
299 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
301 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
302 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
304 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
305 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
306 categories if not specified by dircolors.
308 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
310 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
311 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
313 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
314 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
316 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
318 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
319 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
321 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
322 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
324 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
325 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
326 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
328 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
330 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
332 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
336 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
338 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
339 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
340 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
342 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
343 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
345 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
346 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
347 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
349 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
350 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
352 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
353 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
354 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
355 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
357 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
358 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
360 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
361 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
362 the file system does not support it.
364 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
366 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
367 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
369 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
371 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
372 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
374 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
375 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
376 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
377 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
379 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
380 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
383 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
384 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
385 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
386 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
388 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
389 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
390 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
391 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
393 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
394 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
396 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
398 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
399 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
400 reporting incorrect results.
404 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
405 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
407 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
410 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
412 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
413 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
415 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
416 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
418 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
421 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
422 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
423 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
424 the file name does not look like a page range.
426 printf has several changes:
428 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
429 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
431 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
432 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
433 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
435 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
436 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
439 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
440 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
442 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
443 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
445 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
447 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
448 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
450 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
452 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
454 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
455 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
456 when first encountering the directory.
460 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
461 output; POSIX requires this.
463 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
464 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
466 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
468 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
469 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
471 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
472 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
474 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
475 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
476 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
477 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
478 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
479 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
480 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
482 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
483 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
484 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
486 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
487 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
489 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
491 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
493 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
494 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
495 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
496 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
498 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
502 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
503 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
504 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
505 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
506 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
508 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
509 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
510 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
512 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
513 is longer than PATH_MAX.
515 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
516 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
518 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
519 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
520 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
521 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
522 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
524 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
525 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
527 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
528 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
530 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
532 nocreat do not create the output file
533 excl fail if the output file already exists
534 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
535 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
537 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
539 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
540 direct use direct I/O for data
541 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
542 sync likewise, but also for metadata
543 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
544 nofollow do not follow symlinks
545 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
547 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
549 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
550 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
553 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
554 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
555 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
556 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
557 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
558 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
560 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
561 list of NUL-terminated file names.
563 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
566 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
568 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
570 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
571 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
573 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
574 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
575 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
577 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
578 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
579 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
581 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
583 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
584 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
586 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
587 for compatibility with bash.
589 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
591 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
592 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
593 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
594 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
596 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
597 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
599 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
601 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
602 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
603 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
605 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
608 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
610 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
611 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
612 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
613 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
614 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
615 an offset, not as a file name.
617 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
618 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
620 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
621 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
623 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
624 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
626 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
627 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
628 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
630 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
631 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
633 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
634 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
638 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
640 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
642 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
646 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
647 or more arguments between partitions.
649 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
650 holes in the destination.
652 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
653 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
654 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
655 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
656 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
657 terminates immediately.
659 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
661 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
663 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
664 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
665 not the empty string.
667 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
668 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
672 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
673 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
674 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
677 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
684 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
688 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
689 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
691 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
692 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
694 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
695 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
696 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
699 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
703 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
704 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
706 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
707 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
709 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
710 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
711 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
713 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
715 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
718 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
720 ** Configuration option
722 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
723 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
727 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
728 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
732 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
733 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
734 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
737 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
738 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
739 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
740 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
741 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
742 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
743 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
746 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
750 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
751 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
752 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
754 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
755 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
757 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
759 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
760 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
761 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
762 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
764 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
766 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
767 not just the ones that reference directories
769 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
770 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
772 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
773 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
774 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
776 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
777 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
778 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
779 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
780 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
781 ragged when a datum was too wide.
783 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
788 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
789 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
791 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
793 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
795 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
797 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
798 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
800 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
801 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
803 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
805 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
809 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
811 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
813 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
814 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
815 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
816 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
817 resolution is the best we can do right now.
819 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
820 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
822 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
823 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
825 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
826 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
828 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
829 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
830 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
834 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
835 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
836 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
837 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
838 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
839 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
840 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
841 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
842 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
843 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
844 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
845 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
846 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
847 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
849 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
851 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
852 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
854 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
856 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
858 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
859 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
861 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
863 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
864 without a trailing newline.
866 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
867 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
869 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
872 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
876 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
878 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
880 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
881 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
882 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
883 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
885 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
887 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
888 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
889 be printed without leading spaces.
891 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
892 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
897 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
898 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
899 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
901 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
903 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
904 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
906 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
907 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
909 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
910 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
912 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
914 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
916 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
918 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
919 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
921 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
923 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
925 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
926 byte offsets are specified.
929 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
932 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
935 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
936 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
937 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
938 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
939 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
940 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
941 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
942 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
943 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
944 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
945 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
946 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
947 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
948 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
949 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
950 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
951 directory where M has write access.
952 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
953 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
954 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
957 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
958 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
959 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
960 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
961 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
962 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
963 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
964 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
965 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
966 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
967 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
968 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
969 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
970 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
971 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
972 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
973 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
974 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
975 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
976 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
977 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
978 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
979 appeared one additional time.
981 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
982 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
983 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
984 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
987 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
988 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
989 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
990 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
991 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
992 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
993 if there were more than 338.
995 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
996 - false --help now exits nonzero
999 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1000 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1001 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1002 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1005 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1006 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1007 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1008 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1009 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1012 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1013 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1014 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1015 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1016 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1017 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1018 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1021 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1022 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1023 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1024 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1025 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1026 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1028 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1029 under certain unusual conditions
1030 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1031 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1034 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1035 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1036 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1037 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1038 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1039 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1040 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1041 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1042 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1043 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1044 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1045 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1046 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1047 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1048 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1049 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1052 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1053 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1056 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1057 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1058 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1059 involving hard-linked directories
1060 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1061 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1062 character-special and block files
1065 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1066 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1067 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1068 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1069 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1070 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1071 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1072 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1073 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1075 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1076 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1077 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1078 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1079 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1080 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1081 specified on the command line.
1082 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1083 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1084 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1085 the first file untouched.
1086 * readlink: new program
1087 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1088 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1089 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1090 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1091 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1092 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1095 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1096 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1097 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1098 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1099 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1100 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1101 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1102 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1103 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1104 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1105 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1106 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1108 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1109 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1110 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1112 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1113 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1114 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1115 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1116 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1117 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1118 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1119 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1122 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1123 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1126 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1127 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1128 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1129 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1130 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1131 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1132 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1135 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1136 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1138 ========================================================================
1139 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1140 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1143 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1145 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1146 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1147 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1148 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1149 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1150 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1151 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1152 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1153 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1154 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1155 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1156 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1158 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1159 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1160 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1161 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1163 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1166 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1168 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1169 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1170 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1171 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1172 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1173 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1174 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1177 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1178 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1179 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1180 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1181 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1182 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1183 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1184 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1185 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1186 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1187 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1188 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1189 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1190 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1191 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1192 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1194 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1195 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1197 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1198 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1199 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1200 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1201 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1202 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1204 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1205 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1206 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1207 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1208 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1209 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1210 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1212 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1213 the source files in the following example:
1214 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1215 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1216 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1217 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1218 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1219 links between source files with --preserve=links
1220 * cp accepts new options:
1221 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1222 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1223 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1224 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1225 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1226 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1227 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1228 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1229 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1231 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1232 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1233 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1234 even though it's older than dest.
1235 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1236 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1237 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1238 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1239 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1241 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1242 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1243 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1244 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1245 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1246 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1247 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1249 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1250 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1251 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1253 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1254 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1255 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1256 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1257 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1258 This is the default.
1260 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1261 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1262 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1263 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1264 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1266 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1269 ========================================================================
1270 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1271 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1274 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1275 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1277 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1278 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1279 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1280 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1281 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1283 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1284 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1285 that specifies a non-directory
1288 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1289 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1290 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1291 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1292 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1293 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1294 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1295 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1296 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1297 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1298 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1299 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1300 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1301 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1302 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1303 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1304 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1305 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1306 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1307 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1308 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1309 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1310 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1311 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1313 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1314 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1315 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1317 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1319 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1320 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1322 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1323 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1324 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1325 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1326 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1328 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1329 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1330 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1331 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1332 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1334 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1336 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1337 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1338 * still more portability fixes
1339 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1340 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1342 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1344 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1346 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1348 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1349 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1350 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1351 there is any time remaining
1352 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1354 ========================================================================
1355 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1356 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1358 This package began as the union of the following:
1359 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
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