1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
7 arch: equivalent to uname -m
11 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
12 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
16 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
18 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
19 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
20 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
22 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
23 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
24 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
29 cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
30 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
31 longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
32 components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
33 d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
34 destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
35 copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
36 to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
37 doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
38 the destination is a symlink.
40 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
41 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
43 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
45 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
46 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
48 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
49 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
51 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
52 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
53 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
54 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
56 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
57 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
58 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
60 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
61 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
63 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
64 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
66 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
67 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
69 ** Improved robustness
71 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
72 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
75 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
79 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
81 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
82 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
83 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
85 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
86 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
89 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
93 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
94 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
96 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
97 support but with insufficient /proc support.
99 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
100 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
102 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
103 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
104 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
105 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
106 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
107 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
109 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
110 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
113 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
114 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
116 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
119 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
120 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
121 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
123 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
124 directory is unreadable.
126 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
127 Before it would print nothing.
129 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
133 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
134 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
135 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
137 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
138 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
139 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
140 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
143 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
147 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
148 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
149 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
150 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
151 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
152 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
153 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
155 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
156 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
157 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
158 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
159 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
160 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
161 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
162 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
164 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
165 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
166 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
169 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
173 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
174 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
176 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
177 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
178 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
180 ** Improved robustness
182 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
183 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
184 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
187 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
191 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
192 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
193 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
194 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
195 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
197 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
201 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
204 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
208 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
209 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
210 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
211 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
213 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
214 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
216 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
217 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
218 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
221 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
223 ** Improved robustness
225 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
226 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
228 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
229 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
230 or NFS-mounted partition.
232 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
233 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
237 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
238 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
239 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
240 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
241 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
242 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
244 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
245 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
247 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
248 or neglect to report file removal.
250 For the "groups" command:
252 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
253 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
255 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
257 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
259 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
263 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
264 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
267 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
269 ** Changes in behavior
271 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
272 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
273 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
274 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
276 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
277 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
278 a final `./' or `../' component.
280 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
281 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
284 ** Infrastructure changes
286 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
287 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
288 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
289 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
293 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
296 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
297 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
298 dirent.d_type support.
300 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
301 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
303 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
304 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
305 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
306 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
309 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
311 ** Changes in behavior
313 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
317 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
318 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
322 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
323 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
324 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
326 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
327 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
329 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
330 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
332 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
334 ** Improved robustness
336 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
337 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
338 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
340 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
341 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
344 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
345 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
347 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
348 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
350 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
351 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
353 ** Changes in behavior
355 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
356 where the two are distinct.
358 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
359 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
360 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
361 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
362 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
363 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
364 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
365 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
366 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
367 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
368 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
369 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
370 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
371 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
372 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
373 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
374 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
376 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
377 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
378 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
380 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
381 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
382 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
383 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
386 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
387 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
391 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
392 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
393 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
394 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
396 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
397 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
398 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
400 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
401 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
402 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
403 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
404 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
407 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
408 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
410 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
411 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
412 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
413 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
415 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
416 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
417 successful and the output is easier to parse.
419 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
420 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
421 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
422 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
424 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
425 and sticky) with the -m option.
427 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
428 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
429 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
430 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
431 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
433 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
434 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
436 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
440 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
441 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
442 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
443 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
445 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
447 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
449 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
450 silently ignoring one of them.
452 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
453 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
454 containing this change was 5.92.
456 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
457 automatically newline terminated.
459 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
460 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
461 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
462 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
465 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
466 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
467 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
470 ** Scheduled for removal
472 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
473 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
475 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
476 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
477 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
478 command to unlink a directory.
480 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
481 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
482 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
483 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
487 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
488 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
489 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
490 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
491 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
492 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
496 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
497 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
499 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
501 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
502 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
503 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
505 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
506 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
509 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
510 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
512 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
513 list directories before files.
515 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
516 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
517 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
518 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
521 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
523 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
525 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
526 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
527 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
529 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
530 list of NUL-terminated file names.
534 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
535 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
536 usually printing nothing.
538 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
540 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
541 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
542 them with hard-linked directories.
544 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
545 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
546 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
548 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
549 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
550 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
552 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
555 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
556 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
558 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
559 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
561 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
562 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
564 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
565 all command-line arguments.
567 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
569 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
571 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
572 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
574 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
576 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
577 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
578 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
579 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
580 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
582 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
583 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
585 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
586 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
587 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
588 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
590 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
592 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
596 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
597 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
599 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
600 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
602 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
603 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
605 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
606 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
608 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
609 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
611 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
613 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
614 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
615 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
618 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
620 ** Build-related bug fixes
622 installing .mo files would fail
625 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
629 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
631 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
634 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
638 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
639 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
643 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
645 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
646 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
648 ** Deprecated options
650 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
651 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
653 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
657 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
659 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
660 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
661 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
662 conforming to older POSIX versions.
664 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
667 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
673 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
678 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
680 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
682 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
683 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
684 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
686 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
687 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
688 problematic usages. These include:
690 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
691 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
692 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
693 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
694 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
695 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
696 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
697 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
698 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
700 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
701 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
703 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
704 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
705 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
706 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
708 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
709 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
710 between binary and text files.
712 The following programs now always use text input/output:
716 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
720 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
721 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
724 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
726 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
727 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
729 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
730 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
731 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
733 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
735 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
737 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
738 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
739 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
743 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
745 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
746 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
748 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
749 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
750 blocks until F contains N blocks.
754 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
755 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
759 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
760 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
761 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
765 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
766 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
770 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
772 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
774 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
778 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
779 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
780 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
782 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
783 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
784 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
785 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
786 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
788 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
792 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
793 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
794 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
796 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
798 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
799 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
800 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
801 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
803 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
805 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
806 rather than silently wrapping around.
808 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
809 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
811 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
812 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
814 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
815 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
816 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
819 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
821 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
823 ** Improved robustness
825 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
826 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
827 no matter how large the result.
829 ** Improved portability
831 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
832 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
834 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
836 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
837 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
838 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
840 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
841 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
845 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
846 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
848 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
850 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
851 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
852 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
853 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
855 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
856 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
858 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
859 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
860 categories if not specified by dircolors.
862 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
864 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
865 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
867 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
868 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
870 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
872 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
873 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
875 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
876 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
878 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
879 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
880 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
882 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
884 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
886 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
890 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
892 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
893 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
894 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
896 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
897 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
899 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
900 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
901 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
903 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
904 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
906 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
907 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
908 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
909 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
911 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
912 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
914 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
915 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
916 the file system does not support it.
918 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
920 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
921 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
923 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
925 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
926 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
928 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
929 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
930 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
931 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
933 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
934 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
937 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
938 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
939 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
940 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
942 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
943 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
944 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
945 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
947 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
948 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
950 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
952 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
953 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
954 reporting incorrect results.
958 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
959 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
961 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
964 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
966 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
967 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
969 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
970 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
972 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
975 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
976 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
977 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
978 the file name does not look like a page range.
980 printf has several changes:
982 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
983 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
985 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
986 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
987 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
989 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
990 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
993 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
994 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
996 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
997 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
999 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1001 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1002 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1004 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1006 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1008 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1009 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1010 when first encountering the directory.
1014 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1015 output; POSIX requires this.
1017 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1018 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1020 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1022 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1023 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1025 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1026 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1028 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1029 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1030 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1031 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1032 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1033 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1034 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1036 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1037 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1038 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1040 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1041 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1043 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1045 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1047 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1048 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1049 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1050 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1052 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1056 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1057 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1058 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1059 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1060 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1062 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1063 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1064 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1066 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1067 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1069 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1070 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1072 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1073 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1074 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1075 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1076 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1078 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1079 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1081 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1082 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1084 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1086 nocreat do not create the output file
1087 excl fail if the output file already exists
1088 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1089 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1091 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1093 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1094 direct use direct I/O for data
1095 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1096 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1097 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1098 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1099 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1101 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1103 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1104 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1107 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1108 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1109 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1110 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1111 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1112 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1114 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1115 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1117 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1120 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1122 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1124 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1125 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1127 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1128 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1129 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1131 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1132 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1133 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1135 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1137 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1138 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1140 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1141 for compatibility with bash.
1143 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1145 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1146 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1147 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1148 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1150 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1151 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1153 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1154 ls supports TABSIZE.
1155 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1156 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1157 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1159 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1162 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1164 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1165 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1166 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1167 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1168 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1169 an offset, not as a file name.
1171 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1172 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1174 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1175 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1177 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1178 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1180 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1181 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1182 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1184 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1185 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1187 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1188 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1192 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1194 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1196 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1200 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1201 or more arguments between partitions.
1203 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1204 holes in the destination.
1206 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1207 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1208 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1209 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1210 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1211 terminates immediately.
1213 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1215 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1217 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1218 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1219 not the empty string.
1221 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1222 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1226 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1227 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1228 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1231 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1238 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1242 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1243 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1245 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1246 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1248 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1249 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1250 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1253 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1257 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1258 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1260 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1261 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1263 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1264 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1265 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1267 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1269 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1272 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1274 ** Configuration option
1276 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1277 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1281 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1282 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1286 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1287 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1288 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1291 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1292 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1293 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1294 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1295 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1296 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1297 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1300 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1304 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1305 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1306 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1308 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1309 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1311 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1313 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1314 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1315 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1316 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1318 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1320 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1321 not just the ones that reference directories
1323 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1324 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1326 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1327 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1328 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1330 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1331 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1332 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1333 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1334 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1335 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1337 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1342 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1343 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1345 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1347 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1349 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1351 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1352 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1354 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1355 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1357 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1359 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1363 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1365 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1367 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1368 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1369 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1370 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1371 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1373 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1374 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1376 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1377 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1379 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1380 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1382 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1383 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1384 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1388 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1389 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1390 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1391 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1392 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1393 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1394 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1395 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1396 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1397 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1398 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1399 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1400 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1401 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1403 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1405 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1406 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1408 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1410 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1412 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1413 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1415 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1417 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1418 without a trailing newline.
1420 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1421 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1423 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1426 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1430 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1432 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1434 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1435 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1436 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1437 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1439 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1441 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1442 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1443 be printed without leading spaces.
1445 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1446 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1451 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1452 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1453 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1455 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1457 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1458 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1460 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1461 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1463 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1464 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1466 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1468 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1470 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1472 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1473 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1475 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1477 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1479 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1480 byte offsets are specified.
1483 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1486 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1489 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1490 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1491 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1492 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1493 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1494 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1495 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1496 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1497 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1498 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1499 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1500 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1501 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1502 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1503 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1504 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1505 directory where M has write access.
1506 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1507 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1508 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1511 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1512 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1513 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1514 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1515 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1516 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1517 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1518 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1519 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1520 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1521 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1522 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1523 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1524 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1525 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1526 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1527 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1528 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1529 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1530 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1531 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1532 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1533 appeared one additional time.
1535 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1536 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1537 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1538 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1541 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1542 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1543 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1544 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1545 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1546 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1547 if there were more than 338.
1549 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1550 - false --help now exits nonzero
1553 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1554 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1555 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1556 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1559 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1560 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1561 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1562 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1563 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1566 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1567 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1568 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1569 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1570 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1571 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1572 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1575 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1576 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1577 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1578 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1579 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1580 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1582 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1583 under certain unusual conditions
1584 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1585 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1588 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1589 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1590 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1591 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1592 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1593 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1594 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1595 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1596 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1597 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1598 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1599 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1600 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1601 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1602 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1603 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1606 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1607 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1610 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1611 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1612 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1613 involving hard-linked directories
1614 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1615 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1616 character-special and block files
1619 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1620 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1621 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1622 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1623 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1624 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1625 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1626 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1627 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1629 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1630 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1631 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1632 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1633 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1634 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1635 specified on the command line.
1636 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1637 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1638 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1639 the first file untouched.
1640 * readlink: new program
1641 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1642 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1643 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1644 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1645 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1646 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1649 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1650 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1651 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1652 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1653 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1654 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1655 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1656 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1657 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1658 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1659 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1660 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1662 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1663 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1664 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1666 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1667 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1668 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1669 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1670 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1671 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1672 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1673 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1676 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1677 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1680 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1681 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1682 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1683 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1684 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1685 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1686 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1689 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1690 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1692 ========================================================================
1693 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1694 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1697 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1699 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1700 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1701 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1702 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1703 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1704 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1705 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1706 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1707 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1708 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1709 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1710 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1712 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1713 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1714 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1715 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1717 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1720 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1722 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1723 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1724 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1725 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1726 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1727 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1728 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1731 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1732 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1733 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1734 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1735 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1736 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1737 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1738 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1739 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1740 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1741 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1742 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1743 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1744 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1745 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1746 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1748 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1749 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1751 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1752 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1753 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1754 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1755 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1756 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1758 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1759 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1760 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1761 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1762 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1763 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1764 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1766 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1767 the source files in the following example:
1768 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1769 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1770 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1771 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1772 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1773 links between source files with --preserve=links
1774 * cp accepts new options:
1775 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1776 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1777 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1778 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1779 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1780 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1781 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1782 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1783 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1785 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1786 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1787 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1788 even though it's older than dest.
1789 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1790 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1791 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1792 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1793 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1795 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1796 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1797 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1798 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1799 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1800 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1801 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1803 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1804 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1805 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1807 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1808 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1809 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1810 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1811 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1812 This is the default.
1814 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1815 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1816 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1817 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1818 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1820 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1823 ========================================================================
1824 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1825 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1828 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1829 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1831 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1832 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1833 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1834 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1835 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1837 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1838 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1839 that specifies a non-directory
1842 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1843 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1844 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1845 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1846 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1847 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1848 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1849 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1850 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1851 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1852 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1853 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1854 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1855 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1856 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1857 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1858 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1859 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1860 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1861 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1862 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1863 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1864 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1865 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1867 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1868 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1869 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1871 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1873 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1874 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1876 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1877 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1878 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1879 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1880 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1882 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1883 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1884 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1885 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1886 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1888 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1890 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1891 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1892 * still more portability fixes
1893 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1894 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1896 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1898 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1900 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1902 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1903 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1904 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1905 there is any time remaining
1906 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1908 ========================================================================
1909 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1910 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1912 This package began as the union of the following:
1913 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1915 ========================================================================
1917 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1920 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1921 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1922 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1923 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1924 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1925 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.