1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
7 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
8 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
12 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
14 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
15 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
16 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
18 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
19 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
20 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
25 cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
26 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
27 longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
28 components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
29 d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
30 destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
31 copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
32 to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
33 doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
34 the destination is a symlink.
36 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
37 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
39 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
41 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
42 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
44 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
45 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
47 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
48 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
49 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
50 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
52 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
53 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
54 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
56 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
57 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
59 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
60 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
62 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
63 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
65 ** Improved robustness
67 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
68 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
71 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
75 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
77 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
78 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
79 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
81 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
82 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
85 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
89 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
90 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
92 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
93 support but with insufficient /proc support.
95 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
96 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
98 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
99 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
100 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
101 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
102 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
103 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
105 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
106 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
109 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
110 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
112 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
115 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
116 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
117 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
119 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
120 directory is unreadable.
122 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
123 Before it would print nothing.
125 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
129 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
130 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
131 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
133 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
134 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
135 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
136 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
139 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
143 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
144 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
145 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
146 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
147 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
148 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
149 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
151 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
152 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
153 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
154 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
155 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
156 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
157 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
158 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
160 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
161 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
162 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
165 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
169 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
170 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
172 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
173 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
174 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
176 ** Improved robustness
178 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
179 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
180 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
183 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
187 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
188 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
189 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
190 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
191 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
193 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
197 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
200 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
204 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
205 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
206 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
207 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
209 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
210 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
212 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
213 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
214 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
217 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
219 ** Improved robustness
221 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
222 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
224 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
225 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
226 or NFS-mounted partition.
228 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
229 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
233 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
234 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
235 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
236 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
237 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
238 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
240 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
241 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
243 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
244 or neglect to report file removal.
246 For the "groups" command:
248 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
249 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
251 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
253 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
255 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
259 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
260 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
263 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
265 ** Changes in behavior
267 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
268 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
269 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
270 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
272 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
273 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
274 a final `./' or `../' component.
276 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
277 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
280 ** Infrastructure changes
282 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
283 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
284 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
285 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
289 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
292 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
293 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
294 dirent.d_type support.
296 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
297 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
299 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
300 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
301 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
302 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
305 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
307 ** Changes in behavior
309 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
313 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
314 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
318 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
319 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
320 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
322 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
323 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
325 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
326 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
328 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
330 ** Improved robustness
332 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
333 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
334 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
336 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
337 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
340 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
341 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
343 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
344 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
346 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
347 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
349 ** Changes in behavior
351 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
352 where the two are distinct.
354 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
355 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
356 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
357 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
358 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
359 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
360 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
361 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
362 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
363 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
364 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
365 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
366 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
367 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
368 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
369 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
370 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
372 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
373 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
374 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
376 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
377 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
378 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
379 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
382 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
383 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
387 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
388 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
389 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
390 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
392 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
393 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
394 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
396 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
397 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
398 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
399 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
400 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
403 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
404 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
406 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
407 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
408 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
409 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
411 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
412 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
413 successful and the output is easier to parse.
415 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
416 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
417 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
418 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
420 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
421 and sticky) with the -m option.
423 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
424 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
425 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
426 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
427 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
429 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
430 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
432 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
436 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
437 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
438 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
439 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
441 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
443 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
445 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
446 silently ignoring one of them.
448 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
449 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
450 containing this change was 5.92.
452 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
453 automatically newline terminated.
455 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
456 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
457 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
458 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
461 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
462 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
463 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
466 ** Scheduled for removal
468 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
469 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
471 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
472 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
473 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
474 command to unlink a directory.
476 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
477 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
478 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
479 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
483 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
484 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
485 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
486 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
487 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
488 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
492 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
493 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
495 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
497 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
498 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
499 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
501 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
502 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
505 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
506 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
508 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
509 list directories before files.
511 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
512 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
513 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
514 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
517 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
519 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
521 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
522 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
523 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
525 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
526 list of NUL-terminated file names.
530 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
531 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
532 usually printing nothing.
534 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
536 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
537 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
538 them with hard-linked directories.
540 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
541 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
542 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
544 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
545 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
546 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
548 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
551 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
552 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
554 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
555 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
557 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
558 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
560 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
561 all command-line arguments.
563 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
565 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
567 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
568 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
570 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
572 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
573 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
574 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
575 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
576 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
578 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
579 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
581 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
582 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
583 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
584 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
586 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
588 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
592 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
593 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
595 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
596 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
598 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
599 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
601 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
602 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
604 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
605 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
607 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
609 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
610 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
611 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
614 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
616 ** Build-related bug fixes
618 installing .mo files would fail
621 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
625 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
627 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
630 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
634 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
635 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
639 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
641 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
642 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
644 ** Deprecated options
646 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
647 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
649 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
653 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
655 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
656 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
657 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
658 conforming to older POSIX versions.
660 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
663 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
669 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
674 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
676 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
678 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
679 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
680 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
682 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
683 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
684 problematic usages. These include:
686 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
687 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
688 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
689 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
690 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
691 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
692 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
693 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
694 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
696 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
697 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
699 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
700 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
701 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
702 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
704 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
705 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
706 between binary and text files.
708 The following programs now always use text input/output:
712 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
716 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
717 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
720 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
722 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
723 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
725 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
726 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
727 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
729 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
731 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
733 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
734 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
735 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
739 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
741 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
742 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
744 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
745 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
746 blocks until F contains N blocks.
750 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
751 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
755 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
756 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
757 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
761 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
762 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
766 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
768 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
770 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
774 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
775 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
776 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
778 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
779 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
780 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
781 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
782 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
784 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
788 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
789 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
790 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
792 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
794 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
795 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
796 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
797 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
799 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
801 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
802 rather than silently wrapping around.
804 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
805 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
807 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
808 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
810 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
811 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
812 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
815 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
817 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
819 ** Improved robustness
821 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
822 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
823 no matter how large the result.
825 ** Improved portability
827 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
828 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
830 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
832 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
833 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
834 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
836 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
837 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
841 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
842 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
844 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
846 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
847 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
848 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
849 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
851 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
852 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
854 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
855 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
856 categories if not specified by dircolors.
858 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
860 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
861 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
863 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
864 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
866 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
868 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
869 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
871 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
872 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
874 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
875 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
876 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
878 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
880 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
882 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
886 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
888 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
889 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
890 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
892 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
893 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
895 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
896 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
897 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
899 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
900 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
902 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
903 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
904 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
905 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
907 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
908 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
910 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
911 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
912 the file system does not support it.
914 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
916 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
917 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
919 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
921 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
922 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
924 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
925 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
926 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
927 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
929 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
930 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
933 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
934 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
935 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
936 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
938 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
939 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
940 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
941 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
943 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
944 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
946 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
948 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
949 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
950 reporting incorrect results.
954 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
955 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
957 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
960 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
962 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
963 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
965 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
966 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
968 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
971 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
972 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
973 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
974 the file name does not look like a page range.
976 printf has several changes:
978 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
979 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
981 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
982 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
983 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
985 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
986 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
989 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
990 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
992 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
993 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
995 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
997 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
998 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1000 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1002 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1004 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1005 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1006 when first encountering the directory.
1010 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1011 output; POSIX requires this.
1013 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1014 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1016 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1018 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1019 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1021 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1022 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1024 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1025 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1026 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1027 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1028 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1029 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1030 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1032 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1033 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1034 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1036 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1037 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1039 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1041 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1043 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1044 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1045 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1046 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1048 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1052 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1053 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1054 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1055 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1056 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1058 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1059 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1060 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1062 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1063 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1065 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1066 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1068 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1069 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1070 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1071 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1072 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1074 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1075 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1077 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1078 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1080 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1082 nocreat do not create the output file
1083 excl fail if the output file already exists
1084 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1085 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1087 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1089 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1090 direct use direct I/O for data
1091 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1092 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1093 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1094 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1095 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1097 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1099 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1100 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1103 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1104 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1105 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1106 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1107 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1108 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1110 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1111 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1113 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1116 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1118 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1120 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1121 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1123 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1124 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1125 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1127 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1128 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1129 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1131 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1133 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1134 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1136 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1137 for compatibility with bash.
1139 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1141 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1142 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1143 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1144 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1146 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1147 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1149 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1150 ls supports TABSIZE.
1151 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1152 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1153 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1155 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1158 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1160 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1161 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1162 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1163 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1164 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1165 an offset, not as a file name.
1167 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1168 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1170 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1171 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1173 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1174 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1176 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1177 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1178 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1180 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1181 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1183 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1184 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1188 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1190 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1192 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1196 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1197 or more arguments between partitions.
1199 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1200 holes in the destination.
1202 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1203 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1204 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1205 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1206 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1207 terminates immediately.
1209 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1211 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1213 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1214 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1215 not the empty string.
1217 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1218 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1222 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1223 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1224 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1227 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1234 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1238 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1239 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1241 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1242 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1244 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1245 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1246 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1249 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1253 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1254 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1256 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1257 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1259 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1260 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1261 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1263 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1265 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1268 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1270 ** Configuration option
1272 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1273 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1277 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1278 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1282 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1283 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1284 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1287 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1288 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1289 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1290 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1291 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1292 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1293 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1296 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1300 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1301 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1302 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1304 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1305 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1307 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1309 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1310 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1311 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1312 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1314 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1316 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1317 not just the ones that reference directories
1319 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1320 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1322 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1323 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1324 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1326 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1327 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1328 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1329 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1330 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1331 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1333 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1338 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1339 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1341 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1343 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1345 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1347 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1348 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1350 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1351 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1353 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1355 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1359 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1361 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1363 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1364 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1365 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1366 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1367 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1369 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1370 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1372 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1373 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1375 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1376 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1378 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1379 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1380 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1384 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1385 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1386 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1387 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1388 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1389 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1390 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1391 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1392 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1393 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1394 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1395 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1396 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1397 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1399 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1401 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1402 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1404 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1406 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1408 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1409 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1411 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1413 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1414 without a trailing newline.
1416 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1417 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1419 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1422 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1426 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1428 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1430 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1431 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1432 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1433 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1435 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1437 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1438 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1439 be printed without leading spaces.
1441 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1442 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1447 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1448 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1449 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1451 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1453 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1454 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1456 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1457 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1459 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1460 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1462 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1464 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1466 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1468 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1469 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1471 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1473 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1475 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1476 byte offsets are specified.
1479 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1482 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1485 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1486 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1487 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1488 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1489 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1490 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1491 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1492 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1493 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1494 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1495 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1496 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1497 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1498 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1499 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1500 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1501 directory where M has write access.
1502 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1503 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1504 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1507 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1508 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1509 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1510 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1511 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1512 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1513 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1514 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1515 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1516 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1517 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1518 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1519 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1520 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1521 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1522 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1523 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1524 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1525 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1526 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1527 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1528 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1529 appeared one additional time.
1531 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1532 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1533 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1534 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1537 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1538 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1539 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1540 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1541 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1542 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1543 if there were more than 338.
1545 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1546 - false --help now exits nonzero
1549 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1550 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1551 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1552 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1555 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1556 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1557 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1558 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1559 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1562 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1563 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1564 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1565 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1566 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1567 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1568 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1571 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1572 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1573 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1574 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1575 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1576 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1578 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1579 under certain unusual conditions
1580 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1581 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1584 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1585 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1586 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1587 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1588 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1589 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1590 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1591 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1592 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1593 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1594 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1595 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1596 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1597 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1598 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1599 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1602 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1603 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1606 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1607 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1608 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1609 involving hard-linked directories
1610 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1611 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1612 character-special and block files
1615 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1616 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1617 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1618 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1619 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1620 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1621 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1622 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1623 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1625 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1626 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1627 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1628 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1629 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1630 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1631 specified on the command line.
1632 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1633 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1634 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1635 the first file untouched.
1636 * readlink: new program
1637 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1638 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1639 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1640 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1641 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1642 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1645 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1646 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1647 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1648 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1649 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1650 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1651 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1652 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1653 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1654 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1655 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1656 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1658 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1659 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1660 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1662 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1663 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1664 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1665 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1666 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1667 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1668 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1669 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1672 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1673 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1676 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1677 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1678 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1679 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1680 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1681 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1682 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1685 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1686 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1688 ========================================================================
1689 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1690 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1693 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1695 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1696 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1697 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1698 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1699 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1700 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1701 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1702 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1703 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1704 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1705 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1706 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1708 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1709 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1710 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1711 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1713 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1716 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1718 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1719 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1720 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1721 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1722 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1723 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1724 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1727 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1728 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1729 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1730 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1731 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1732 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1733 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1734 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1735 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1736 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1737 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1738 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1739 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1740 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1741 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1742 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1744 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1745 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1747 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1748 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1749 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1750 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1751 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1752 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1754 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1755 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1756 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1757 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1758 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1759 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1760 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1762 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1763 the source files in the following example:
1764 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1765 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1766 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1767 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1768 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1769 links between source files with --preserve=links
1770 * cp accepts new options:
1771 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1772 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1773 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1774 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1775 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1776 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1777 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1778 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1779 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1781 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1782 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1783 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1784 even though it's older than dest.
1785 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1786 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1787 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1788 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1789 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1791 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1792 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1793 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1794 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1795 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1796 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1797 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1799 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1800 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1801 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1803 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1804 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1805 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1806 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1807 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1808 This is the default.
1810 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1811 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1812 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1813 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1814 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1816 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1819 ========================================================================
1820 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1821 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1824 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1825 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1827 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1828 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1829 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1830 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1831 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1833 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1834 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1835 that specifies a non-directory
1838 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1839 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1840 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1841 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1842 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1843 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1844 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1845 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1846 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1847 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1848 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1849 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1850 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1851 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1852 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1853 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1854 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1855 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1856 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1857 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1858 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1859 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1860 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1861 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1863 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1864 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1865 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1867 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1869 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1870 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1872 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1873 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1874 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1875 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1876 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1878 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1879 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1880 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1881 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1882 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1884 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1886 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1887 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1888 * still more portability fixes
1889 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1890 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1892 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1894 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1896 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1898 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1899 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1900 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1901 there is any time remaining
1902 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1904 ========================================================================
1905 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1906 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1908 This package began as the union of the following:
1909 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1911 ========================================================================
1913 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1916 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1917 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1918 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1919 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1920 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1921 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.