1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-??) [stable]
7 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
9 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
11 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
15 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
16 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
20 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
22 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
23 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
27 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
28 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
30 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
34 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
36 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
37 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
38 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
39 conforming to older POSIX versions.
41 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
44 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
50 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
55 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
57 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
59 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
60 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
61 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
63 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
64 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
65 problematic usages. These include:
67 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
68 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
69 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
70 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
71 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
72 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
73 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
74 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
75 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
77 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
78 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
80 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
81 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
82 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
83 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
85 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
86 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
87 between binary and text files.
89 The following programs now always use text input/output:
93 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
97 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
98 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
101 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
103 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
104 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
106 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
107 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
108 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
110 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
112 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
114 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
115 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
116 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
120 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
122 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
123 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
125 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
126 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
127 blocks until F contains N blocks.
131 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
132 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
136 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
137 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
138 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
142 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
143 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
147 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
149 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
151 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
155 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
156 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
157 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
159 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
160 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
161 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
162 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
163 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
165 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
169 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
170 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
171 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
173 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
175 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
176 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
177 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
178 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
180 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
182 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
183 rather than silently wrapping around.
185 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
186 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
188 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
189 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
191 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
192 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
193 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
196 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
198 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
200 ** Improved robustness
202 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
203 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
204 no matter how large the result.
206 ** Improved portability
208 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
209 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
211 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
213 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
214 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
215 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
217 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
218 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
222 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
223 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
225 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
227 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
228 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
229 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
230 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
232 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
233 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
235 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
236 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
237 categories if not specified by dircolors.
239 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
241 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
242 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
244 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
245 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
247 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
249 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
250 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
252 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
253 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
255 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
256 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
257 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
259 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
261 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
263 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
267 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
269 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
270 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
271 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
273 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
274 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
276 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
277 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
278 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
280 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
281 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
283 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
284 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
285 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
286 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
288 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
289 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
291 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
292 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
293 the file system does not support it.
295 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
297 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
298 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
300 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
302 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
303 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
305 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
306 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
307 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
308 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
310 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
311 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
314 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
315 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
316 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
317 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
319 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
320 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
321 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
322 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
324 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
325 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
327 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
329 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
330 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
331 reporting incorrect results.
335 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
336 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
338 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
341 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
343 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
344 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
346 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
347 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
349 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
352 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
353 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
354 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
355 the file name does not look like a page range.
357 printf has several changes:
359 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
360 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
362 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
363 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
364 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
366 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
367 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
370 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
371 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
373 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
374 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
376 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
377 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
379 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
381 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
383 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
384 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
385 when first encountering the directory.
389 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
390 output; POSIX requires this.
392 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
393 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
395 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
397 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
398 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
400 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
401 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
403 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
404 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
405 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
406 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
407 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
408 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
409 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
411 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
412 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
413 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
415 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
416 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
418 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
420 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
422 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
423 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
424 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
425 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
427 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
431 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
432 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
433 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
434 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
435 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
437 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
438 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
439 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
441 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
442 is longer than PATH_MAX.
444 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
445 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
447 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
448 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
449 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
450 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
451 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
453 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
454 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
456 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
457 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
459 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
461 nocreat do not create the output file
462 excl fail if the output file already exists
463 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
464 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
466 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
468 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
469 direct use direct I/O for data
470 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
471 sync likewise, but also for metadata
472 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
473 nofollow do not follow symlinks
474 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
476 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
478 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
479 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
482 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
483 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
484 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
485 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
486 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
487 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
489 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
490 list of NUL-terminated file names.
492 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
495 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
497 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
499 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
500 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
502 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
503 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
504 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
506 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
507 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
508 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
510 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
512 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
513 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
515 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
516 for compatibility with bash.
518 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
520 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
521 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
522 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
523 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
525 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
526 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
528 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
530 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
531 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
532 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
534 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
537 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
539 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
540 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
541 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
542 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
543 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
544 an offset, not as a file name.
546 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
547 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
549 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
550 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
552 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
553 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
555 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
556 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
557 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
559 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
560 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
564 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
566 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
568 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
572 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
573 or more arguments between partitions.
575 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
576 holes in the destination.
578 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
579 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
580 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
581 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
582 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
583 terminates immediately.
585 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
587 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
589 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
590 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
591 not the empty string.
593 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
594 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
598 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
599 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
600 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
603 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
610 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
614 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
615 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
617 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
618 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
620 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
621 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
622 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
625 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
629 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
630 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
632 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
633 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
635 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
636 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
637 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
639 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
641 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
644 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
646 ** Configuration option
648 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
649 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
653 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
654 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
658 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
659 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
660 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
663 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
664 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
665 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
666 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
667 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
668 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
669 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
672 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
676 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
677 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
678 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
680 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
681 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
683 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
685 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
686 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
687 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
688 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
690 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
692 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
693 not just the ones that reference directories
695 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
696 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
698 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
699 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
700 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
702 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
703 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
704 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
705 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
706 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
707 ragged when a datum was too wide.
709 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
714 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
715 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
717 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
719 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
721 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
723 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
724 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
726 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
727 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
729 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
731 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
735 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
737 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
739 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
740 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
741 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
742 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
743 resolution is the best we can do right now.
745 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
746 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
748 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
749 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
751 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
752 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
754 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
755 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
756 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
760 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
761 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
762 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
763 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
764 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
765 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
766 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
767 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
768 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
769 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
770 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
771 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
772 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
773 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
775 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
777 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
778 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
780 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
782 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
784 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
785 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
787 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
789 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
790 without a trailing newline.
792 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
793 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
795 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
798 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
802 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
804 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
806 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
807 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
808 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
809 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
811 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
813 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
814 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
815 be printed without leading spaces.
817 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
818 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
823 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
824 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
825 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
827 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
829 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
830 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
832 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
833 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
835 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
836 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
838 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
840 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
842 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
844 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
845 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
847 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
849 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
851 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
852 byte offsets are specified.
855 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
858 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
861 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
862 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
863 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
864 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
865 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
866 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
867 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
868 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
869 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
870 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
871 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
872 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
873 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
874 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
875 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
876 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
877 directory where M has write access.
878 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
879 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
880 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
883 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
884 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
885 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
886 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
887 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
888 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
889 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
890 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
891 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
892 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
893 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
894 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
895 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
896 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
897 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
898 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
899 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
900 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
901 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
902 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
903 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
904 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
905 appeared one additional time.
907 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
908 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
909 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
910 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
913 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
914 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
915 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
916 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
917 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
918 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
919 if there were more than 338.
921 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
922 - false --help now exits nonzero
925 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
926 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
927 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
928 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
931 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
932 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
933 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
934 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
935 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
938 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
939 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
940 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
941 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
942 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
943 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
944 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
947 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
948 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
949 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
950 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
951 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
952 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
954 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
955 under certain unusual conditions
956 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
957 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
960 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
961 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
962 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
963 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
964 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
965 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
966 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
967 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
968 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
969 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
970 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
971 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
972 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
973 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
974 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
975 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
978 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
979 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
982 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
983 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
984 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
985 involving hard-linked directories
986 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
987 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
988 character-special and block files
991 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
992 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
993 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
994 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
995 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
996 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
997 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
998 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
999 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1001 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1002 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1003 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1004 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1005 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1006 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1007 specified on the command line.
1008 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1009 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1010 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1011 the first file untouched.
1012 * readlink: new program
1013 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1014 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1015 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1016 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1017 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1018 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1021 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1022 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1023 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1024 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1025 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1026 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1027 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1028 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1029 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1030 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1031 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1032 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1034 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1035 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1036 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1038 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1039 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1040 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1041 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1042 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1043 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1044 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1045 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1048 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1049 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1052 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1053 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1054 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1055 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1056 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1057 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1058 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1061 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1062 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1064 ========================================================================
1065 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1066 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1069 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1071 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1072 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1073 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1074 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1075 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1076 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1077 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1078 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1079 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1080 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1081 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1082 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1084 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1085 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1086 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1087 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1089 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1092 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1094 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1095 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1096 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1097 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1098 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1099 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1100 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1103 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1104 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1105 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1106 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1107 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1108 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1109 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1110 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1111 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1112 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1113 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1114 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1115 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1116 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1117 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1118 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1120 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1121 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1123 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1124 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1125 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1126 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1127 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1128 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1130 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1131 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1132 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1133 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1134 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1135 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1136 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1138 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1139 the source files in the following example:
1140 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1141 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1142 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1143 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1144 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1145 links between source files with --preserve=links
1146 * cp accepts new options:
1147 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1148 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1149 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1150 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1151 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1152 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1153 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1154 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1155 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1157 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1158 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1159 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1160 even though it's older than dest.
1161 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1162 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1163 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1164 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1165 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1167 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1168 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1169 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1170 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1171 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1172 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1173 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1175 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1176 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1177 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1179 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1180 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1181 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1182 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1183 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1184 This is the default.
1186 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1187 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1188 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1189 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1190 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1192 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1195 ========================================================================
1196 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1197 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1200 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1201 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1203 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1204 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1205 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1206 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1207 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1209 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1210 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1211 that specifies a non-directory
1214 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1215 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1216 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1217 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1218 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1219 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1220 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1221 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1222 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1223 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1224 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1225 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1226 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1227 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1228 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1229 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1230 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1231 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1232 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1233 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1234 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1235 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1236 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1237 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1239 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1240 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1241 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1243 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1245 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1246 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1248 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1249 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1250 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1251 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1252 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1254 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1255 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1256 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1257 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1258 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1260 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1262 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1263 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1264 * still more portability fixes
1265 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1266 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1268 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1270 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1272 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1274 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1275 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1276 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1277 there is any time remaining
1278 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1280 ========================================================================
1281 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1282 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1284 This package began as the union of the following:
1285 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
projects / platform / upstream / coreutils.git / blob