1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
7 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
9 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
10 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
11 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
13 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
14 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
15 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
20 cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
21 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
22 longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
23 components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
24 d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
25 destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
26 copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
27 to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
28 doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
29 the destination is a symlink.
31 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
32 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
34 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
36 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
37 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
39 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
40 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
42 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
43 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
44 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
45 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
47 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
48 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
49 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
51 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
52 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
54 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
55 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
57 ** Improved robustness
59 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
60 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
63 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
67 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
69 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
70 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
71 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
73 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
74 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
77 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
81 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
82 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
84 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
85 support but with insufficient /proc support.
87 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
88 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
90 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
91 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
92 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
93 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
94 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
95 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
97 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
98 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
101 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
102 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
104 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
107 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
108 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
109 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
111 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
112 directory is unreadable.
114 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
115 Before it would print nothing.
117 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
121 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
122 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
123 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
125 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
126 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
127 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
128 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
131 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
135 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
136 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
137 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
138 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
139 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
140 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
141 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
143 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
144 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
145 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
146 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
147 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
148 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
149 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
150 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
152 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
153 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
154 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
157 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
161 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
162 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
164 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
165 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
166 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
168 ** Improved robustness
170 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
171 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
172 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
175 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
179 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
180 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
181 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
182 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
183 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
185 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
189 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
192 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
196 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
197 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
198 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
199 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
201 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
202 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
204 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
205 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
206 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
209 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
211 ** Improved robustness
213 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
214 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
216 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
217 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
218 or NFS-mounted partition.
220 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
221 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
225 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
226 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
227 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
228 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
229 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
230 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
232 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
233 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
235 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
236 or neglect to report file removal.
238 For the "groups" command:
240 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
241 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
243 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
245 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
247 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
251 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
252 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
255 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
257 ** Changes in behavior
259 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
260 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
261 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
262 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
264 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
265 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
266 a final `./' or `../' component.
268 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
269 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
272 ** Infrastructure changes
274 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
275 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
276 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
277 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
281 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
284 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
285 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
286 dirent.d_type support.
288 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
289 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
291 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
292 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
293 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
294 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
297 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
299 ** Changes in behavior
301 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
305 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
306 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
310 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
311 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
312 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
314 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
315 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
317 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
318 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
320 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
322 ** Improved robustness
324 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
325 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
326 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
328 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
329 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
332 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
333 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
335 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
336 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
338 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
339 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
341 ** Changes in behavior
343 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
344 where the two are distinct.
346 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
347 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
348 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
349 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
350 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
351 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
352 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
353 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
354 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
355 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
356 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
357 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
358 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
359 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
360 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
361 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
362 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
364 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
365 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
366 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
368 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
369 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
370 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
371 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
374 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
375 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
379 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
380 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
381 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
382 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
384 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
385 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
386 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
388 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
389 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
390 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
391 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
392 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
395 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
396 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
398 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
399 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
400 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
401 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
403 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
404 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
405 successful and the output is easier to parse.
407 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
408 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
409 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
410 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
412 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
413 and sticky) with the -m option.
415 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
416 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
417 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
418 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
419 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
421 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
422 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
424 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
428 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
429 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
430 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
431 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
433 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
435 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
437 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
438 silently ignoring one of them.
440 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
441 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
442 containing this change was 5.92.
444 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
445 automatically newline terminated.
447 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
448 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
449 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
450 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
453 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
454 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
455 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
458 ** Scheduled for removal
460 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
461 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
463 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
464 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
465 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
466 command to unlink a directory.
468 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
469 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
470 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
471 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
475 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
476 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
477 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
478 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
479 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
480 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
484 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
485 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
487 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
489 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
490 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
491 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
493 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
494 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
497 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
498 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
500 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
501 list directories before files.
503 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
504 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
505 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
506 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
509 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
511 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
513 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
514 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
515 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
517 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
518 list of NUL-terminated file names.
522 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
523 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
524 usually printing nothing.
526 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
528 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
529 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
530 them with hard-linked directories.
532 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
533 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
534 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
536 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
537 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
538 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
540 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
543 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
544 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
546 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
547 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
549 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
550 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
552 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
553 all command-line arguments.
555 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
557 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
559 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
560 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
562 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
564 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
565 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
566 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
567 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
568 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
570 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
571 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
573 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
574 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
575 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
576 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
578 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
580 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
584 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
585 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
587 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
588 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
590 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
591 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
593 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
594 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
596 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
597 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
599 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
601 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
602 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
603 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
606 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
608 ** Build-related bug fixes
610 installing .mo files would fail
613 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
617 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
619 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
622 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
626 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
627 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
631 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
633 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
634 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
636 ** Deprecated options
638 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
639 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
641 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
645 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
647 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
648 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
649 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
650 conforming to older POSIX versions.
652 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
655 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
661 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
666 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
668 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
670 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
671 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
672 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
674 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
675 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
676 problematic usages. These include:
678 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
679 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
680 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
681 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
682 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
683 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
684 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
685 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
686 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
688 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
689 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
691 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
692 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
693 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
694 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
696 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
697 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
698 between binary and text files.
700 The following programs now always use text input/output:
704 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
708 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
709 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
712 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
714 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
715 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
717 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
718 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
719 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
721 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
723 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
725 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
726 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
727 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
731 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
733 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
734 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
736 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
737 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
738 blocks until F contains N blocks.
742 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
743 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
747 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
748 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
749 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
753 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
754 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
758 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
760 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
762 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
766 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
767 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
768 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
770 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
771 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
772 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
773 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
774 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
776 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
780 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
781 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
782 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
784 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
786 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
787 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
788 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
789 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
791 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
793 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
794 rather than silently wrapping around.
796 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
797 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
799 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
800 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
802 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
803 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
804 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
807 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
809 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
811 ** Improved robustness
813 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
814 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
815 no matter how large the result.
817 ** Improved portability
819 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
820 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
822 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
824 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
825 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
826 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
828 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
829 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
833 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
834 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
836 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
838 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
839 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
840 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
841 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
843 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
844 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
846 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
847 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
848 categories if not specified by dircolors.
850 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
852 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
853 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
855 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
856 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
858 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
860 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
861 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
863 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
864 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
866 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
867 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
868 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
870 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
872 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
874 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
878 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
880 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
881 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
882 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
884 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
885 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
887 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
888 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
889 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
891 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
892 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
894 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
895 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
896 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
897 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
899 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
900 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
902 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
903 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
904 the file system does not support it.
906 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
908 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
909 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
911 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
913 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
914 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
916 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
917 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
918 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
919 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
921 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
922 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
925 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
926 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
927 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
928 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
930 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
931 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
932 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
933 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
935 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
936 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
938 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
940 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
941 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
942 reporting incorrect results.
946 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
947 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
949 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
952 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
954 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
955 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
957 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
958 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
960 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
963 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
964 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
965 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
966 the file name does not look like a page range.
968 printf has several changes:
970 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
971 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
973 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
974 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
975 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
977 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
978 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
981 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
982 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
984 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
985 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
987 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
989 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
990 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
992 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
994 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
996 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
997 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
998 when first encountering the directory.
1002 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1003 output; POSIX requires this.
1005 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1006 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1008 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1010 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1011 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1013 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1014 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1016 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1017 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1018 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1019 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1020 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1021 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1022 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1024 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1025 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1026 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1028 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1029 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1031 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1033 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1035 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1036 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1037 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1038 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1040 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1044 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1045 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1046 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1047 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1048 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1050 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1051 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1052 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1054 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1055 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1057 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1058 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1060 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1061 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1062 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1063 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1064 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1066 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1067 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1069 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1070 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1072 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1074 nocreat do not create the output file
1075 excl fail if the output file already exists
1076 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1077 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1079 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1081 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1082 direct use direct I/O for data
1083 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1084 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1085 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1086 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1087 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1089 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1091 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1092 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1095 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1096 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1097 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1098 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1099 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1100 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1102 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1103 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1105 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1108 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1110 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1112 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1113 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1115 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1116 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1117 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1119 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1120 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1121 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1123 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1125 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1126 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1128 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1129 for compatibility with bash.
1131 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1133 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1134 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1135 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1136 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1138 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1139 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1141 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1142 ls supports TABSIZE.
1143 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1144 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1145 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1147 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1150 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1152 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1153 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1154 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1155 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1156 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1157 an offset, not as a file name.
1159 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1160 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1162 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1163 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1165 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1166 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1168 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1169 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1170 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1172 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1173 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1175 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1176 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1180 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1182 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1184 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1188 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1189 or more arguments between partitions.
1191 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1192 holes in the destination.
1194 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1195 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1196 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1197 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1198 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1199 terminates immediately.
1201 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1203 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1205 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1206 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1207 not the empty string.
1209 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1210 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1214 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1215 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1216 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1219 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1226 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1230 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1231 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1233 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1234 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1236 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1237 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1238 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1241 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1245 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1246 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1248 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1249 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1251 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1252 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1253 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1255 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1257 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1260 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1262 ** Configuration option
1264 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1265 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1269 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1270 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1274 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1275 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1276 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1279 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1280 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1281 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1282 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1283 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1284 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1285 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1288 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1292 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1293 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1294 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1296 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1297 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1299 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1301 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1302 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1303 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1304 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1306 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1308 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1309 not just the ones that reference directories
1311 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1312 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1314 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1315 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1316 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1318 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1319 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1320 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1321 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1322 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1323 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1325 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1330 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1331 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1333 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1335 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1337 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1339 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1340 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1342 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1343 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1345 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1347 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1351 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1353 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1355 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1356 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1357 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1358 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1359 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1361 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1362 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1364 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1365 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1367 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1368 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1370 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1371 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1372 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1376 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1377 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1378 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1379 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1380 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1381 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1382 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1383 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1384 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1385 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1386 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1387 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1388 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1389 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1391 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1393 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1394 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1396 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1398 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1400 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1401 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1403 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1405 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1406 without a trailing newline.
1408 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1409 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1411 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1414 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1418 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1420 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1422 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1423 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1424 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1425 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1427 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1429 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1430 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1431 be printed without leading spaces.
1433 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1434 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1439 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1440 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1441 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1443 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1445 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1446 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1448 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1449 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1451 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1452 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1454 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1456 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1458 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1460 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1461 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1463 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1465 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1467 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1468 byte offsets are specified.
1471 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1474 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1477 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1478 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1479 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1480 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1481 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1482 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1483 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1484 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1485 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1486 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1487 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1488 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1489 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1490 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1491 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1492 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1493 directory where M has write access.
1494 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1495 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1496 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1499 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1500 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1501 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1502 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1503 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1504 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1505 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1506 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1507 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1508 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1509 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1510 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1511 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1512 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1513 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1514 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1515 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1516 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1517 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1518 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1519 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1520 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1521 appeared one additional time.
1523 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1524 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1525 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1526 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1529 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1530 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1531 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1532 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1533 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1534 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1535 if there were more than 338.
1537 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1538 - false --help now exits nonzero
1541 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1542 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1543 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1544 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1547 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1548 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1549 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1550 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1551 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1554 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1555 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1556 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1557 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1558 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1559 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1560 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1563 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1564 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1565 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1566 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1567 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1568 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1570 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1571 under certain unusual conditions
1572 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1573 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1576 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1577 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1578 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1579 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1580 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1581 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1582 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1583 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1584 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1585 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1586 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1587 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1588 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1589 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1590 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1591 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1594 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1595 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1598 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1599 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1600 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1601 involving hard-linked directories
1602 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1603 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1604 character-special and block files
1607 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1608 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1609 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1610 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1611 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1612 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1613 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1614 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1615 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1617 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1618 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1619 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1620 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1621 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1622 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1623 specified on the command line.
1624 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1625 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1626 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1627 the first file untouched.
1628 * readlink: new program
1629 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1630 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1631 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1632 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1633 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1634 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1637 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1638 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1639 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1640 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1641 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1642 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1643 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1644 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1645 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1646 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1647 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1648 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1650 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1651 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1652 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1654 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1655 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1656 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1657 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1658 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1659 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1660 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1661 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1664 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1665 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1668 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1669 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1670 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1671 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1672 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1673 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1674 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1677 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1678 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1680 ========================================================================
1681 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1682 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1685 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1687 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1688 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1689 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1690 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1691 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1692 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1693 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1694 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1695 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1696 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1697 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1698 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1700 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1701 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1702 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1703 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1705 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1708 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1710 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1711 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1712 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1713 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1714 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1715 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1716 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1719 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1720 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1721 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1722 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1723 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1724 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1725 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1726 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1727 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1728 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1729 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1730 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1731 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1732 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1733 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1734 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1736 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1737 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1739 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1740 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1741 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1742 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1743 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1744 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1746 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1747 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1748 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1749 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1750 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1751 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1752 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1754 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1755 the source files in the following example:
1756 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1757 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1758 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1759 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1760 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1761 links between source files with --preserve=links
1762 * cp accepts new options:
1763 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1764 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1765 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1766 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1767 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1768 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1769 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1770 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1771 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1773 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1774 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1775 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1776 even though it's older than dest.
1777 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1778 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1779 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1780 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1781 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1783 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1784 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1785 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1786 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1787 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1788 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1789 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1791 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1792 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1793 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1795 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1796 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1797 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1798 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1799 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1800 This is the default.
1802 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1803 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1804 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1805 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1806 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1808 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1811 ========================================================================
1812 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1813 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1816 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1817 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1819 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1820 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1821 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1822 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1823 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1825 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1826 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1827 that specifies a non-directory
1830 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1831 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1832 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1833 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1834 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1835 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1836 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1837 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1838 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1839 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1840 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1841 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1842 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1843 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1844 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1845 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1846 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1847 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1848 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1849 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1850 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1851 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1852 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1853 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1855 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1856 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1857 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1859 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1861 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1862 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1864 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1865 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1866 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1867 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1868 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1870 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1871 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1872 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1873 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1874 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1876 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1878 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1879 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1880 * still more portability fixes
1881 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1882 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1884 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1886 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1888 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1890 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1891 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1892 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1893 there is any time remaining
1894 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1896 ========================================================================
1897 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1898 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1900 This package began as the union of the following:
1901 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1903 ========================================================================
1905 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1908 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1909 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1910 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1911 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1912 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1913 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.