1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
7 arch: equivalent to uname -m, not installed by default
8 But don't install this program on Solaris systems.
10 ** Changes in behavior
12 pr -F no longer suppresses the footer or the first two blank lines in
13 the header. This is for compatibility with BSD and POSIX.
17 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
19 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
20 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
21 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
23 wc no longer warns about character decoding errors in multibyte locales.
24 This means for example that "wc /bin/sh" now produces normal output
25 (though the word count will have no real meaning) rather than many
30 By default, "make install" no longer attempts to install (or even build) su.
31 To change that, use ./configure --enable-install-program=su.
32 If you also want to install the new "arch" program, do this:
33 ./configure --enable-install-program=arch,su.
35 You can inhibit the compilation and installation of selected programs
36 at configure time. For example, to avoid installing "hostname" and
37 "uptime", use ./configure --enable-no-install-program=hostname,uptime
38 Note: currently, "make check" passes, even when arch and su are not
39 built (that's the new default). However, if you inhibit the building
40 and installation of other programs, don't be surprised if some parts
45 cp no longer fails to write through a dangling symlink
46 [bug introduced in coreutils-6.7]. cp --parents no
47 longer mishandles symlinks to directories in file name
48 components in the source, e.g., "cp --parents symlink/a/b
49 d" no longer fails. Also, 'cp' no longer considers a
50 destination symlink to be the same as the referenced file when
51 copying links or making backups. For example, if SYM is a symlink
52 to FILE, "cp -l FILE SYM" now reports an error instead of silently
53 doing nothing. The behavior of 'cp' is now better documented when
54 the destination is a symlink.
56 cut now diagnoses a range starting with zero (e.g., -f 0-2) as invalid;
57 before, it would treat it as if it started with 1 (-f 1-2).
59 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
61 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
62 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
64 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
65 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
67 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
68 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
69 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
70 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
72 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
73 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
74 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
76 seq no longer mishandles obvious cases like "seq 0 0.000001 0.000003",
77 so workarounds like "seq 0 0.000001 0.0000031" are no longer needed.
79 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
80 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
82 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
83 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
85 ** Improved robustness
87 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
88 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
91 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
95 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
97 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
98 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
99 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
101 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
102 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
105 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
109 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
110 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
112 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
113 support but with insufficient /proc support.
115 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
116 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
118 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
119 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
120 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
121 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
122 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
123 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
125 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
126 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
129 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
130 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
132 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
135 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
136 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
137 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
139 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
140 directory is unreadable.
142 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
143 Before it would print nothing.
145 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
149 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
150 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
151 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
153 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
154 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
155 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
156 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
159 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
163 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
164 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
165 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
166 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
167 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
168 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
169 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
171 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
172 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
173 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
174 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
175 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
176 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
177 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
178 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
180 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
181 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
182 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
185 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
189 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
190 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
192 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
193 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
194 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
196 ** Improved robustness
198 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
199 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
200 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
203 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
207 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
208 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
209 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
210 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
211 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
213 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
217 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
220 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
224 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
225 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
226 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
227 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
229 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
230 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
232 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
233 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
234 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
237 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
239 ** Improved robustness
241 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
242 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
244 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
245 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
246 or NFS-mounted partition.
248 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
249 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
253 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
254 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
255 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
256 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
257 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
258 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
260 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
261 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
263 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
264 or neglect to report file removal.
266 For the "groups" command:
268 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
269 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
271 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
273 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
275 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
279 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
280 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
283 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
285 ** Changes in behavior
287 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
288 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
289 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
290 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
292 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
293 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
294 a final `./' or `../' component.
296 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
297 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
300 ** Infrastructure changes
302 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
303 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
304 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
305 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
309 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
312 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
313 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
314 dirent.d_type support.
316 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
317 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
319 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
320 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
321 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
322 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
325 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
327 ** Changes in behavior
329 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
333 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
334 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
338 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
339 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
340 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
342 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
343 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
345 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
346 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
348 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
350 ** Improved robustness
352 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
353 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
354 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
356 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
357 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
360 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
361 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
363 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
364 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
366 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
367 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
369 ** Changes in behavior
371 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
372 where the two are distinct.
374 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
375 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
376 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
377 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
378 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
379 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
380 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
381 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
382 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
383 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
384 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
385 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
386 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
387 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
388 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
389 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
390 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
392 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
393 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
394 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
396 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
397 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
398 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
399 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
402 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
403 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
407 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
408 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
409 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
410 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
412 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
413 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
414 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
416 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
417 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
418 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
419 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
420 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
423 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
424 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
426 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
427 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
428 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
429 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
431 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
432 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
433 successful and the output is easier to parse.
435 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
436 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
437 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
438 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
440 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
441 and sticky) with the -m option.
443 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
444 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
445 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
446 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
447 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
449 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
450 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
452 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
456 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
457 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
458 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
459 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
461 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
463 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
465 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
466 silently ignoring one of them.
468 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
469 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
470 containing this change was 5.92.
472 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
473 automatically newline terminated.
475 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
476 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
477 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
478 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
481 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
482 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
483 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
486 ** Scheduled for removal
488 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
489 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
491 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
492 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
493 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
494 command to unlink a directory.
496 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
497 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
498 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
499 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
503 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
504 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
505 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
506 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
507 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
508 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
512 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
513 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
515 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
517 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
518 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
519 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
521 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
522 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
525 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
526 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
528 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
529 list directories before files.
531 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
532 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
533 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
534 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
537 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
539 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
541 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
542 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
543 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
545 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
546 list of NUL-terminated file names.
550 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
551 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
552 usually printing nothing.
554 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
556 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
557 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
558 them with hard-linked directories.
560 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
561 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
562 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
564 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
565 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
566 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
568 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
571 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
572 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
574 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
575 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
577 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
578 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
580 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
581 all command-line arguments.
583 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
585 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
587 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
588 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
590 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
592 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
593 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
594 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
595 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
596 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
598 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
599 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
601 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
602 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
603 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
604 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
606 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
608 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
612 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
613 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
615 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
616 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
618 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
619 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
621 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
622 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
624 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
625 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
627 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
629 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
630 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
631 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
634 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
636 ** Build-related bug fixes
638 installing .mo files would fail
641 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
645 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
647 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
650 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
654 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
655 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
659 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
661 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
662 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
664 ** Deprecated options
666 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
667 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
669 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
673 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
675 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
676 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
677 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
678 conforming to older POSIX versions.
680 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
683 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
689 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
694 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
696 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
698 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
699 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
700 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
702 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
703 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
704 problematic usages. These include:
706 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
707 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
708 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
709 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
710 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
711 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
712 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
713 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
714 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
716 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
717 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
719 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
720 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
721 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
722 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
724 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
725 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
726 between binary and text files.
728 The following programs now always use text input/output:
732 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
736 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
737 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
740 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
742 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
743 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
745 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
746 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
747 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
749 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
751 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
753 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
754 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
755 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
759 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
761 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
762 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
764 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
765 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
766 blocks until F contains N blocks.
770 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
771 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
775 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
776 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
777 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
781 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
782 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
786 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
788 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
790 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
794 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
795 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
796 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
798 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
799 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
800 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
801 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
802 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
804 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
808 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
809 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
810 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
812 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
814 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
815 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
816 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
817 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
819 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
821 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
822 rather than silently wrapping around.
824 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
825 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
827 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
828 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
830 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
831 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
832 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
835 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
837 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
839 ** Improved robustness
841 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
842 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
843 no matter how large the result.
845 ** Improved portability
847 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
848 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
850 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
852 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
853 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
854 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
856 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
857 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
861 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
862 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
864 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
866 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
867 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
868 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
869 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
871 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
872 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
874 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
875 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
876 categories if not specified by dircolors.
878 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
880 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
881 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
883 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
884 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
886 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
888 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
889 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
891 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
892 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
894 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
895 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
896 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
898 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
900 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
902 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
906 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
908 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
909 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
910 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
912 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
913 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
915 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
916 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
917 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
919 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
920 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
922 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
923 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
924 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
925 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
927 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
928 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
930 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
931 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
932 the file system does not support it.
934 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
936 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
937 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
939 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
941 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
942 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
944 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
945 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
946 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
947 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
949 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
950 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
953 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
954 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
955 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
956 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
958 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
959 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
960 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
961 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
963 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
964 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
966 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
968 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
969 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
970 reporting incorrect results.
974 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
975 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
977 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
980 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
982 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
983 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
985 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
986 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
988 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
991 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
992 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
993 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
994 the file name does not look like a page range.
996 printf has several changes:
998 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
999 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
1001 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
1002 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
1003 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
1005 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
1006 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
1009 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
1010 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
1012 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
1013 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
1015 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
1017 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
1018 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
1020 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
1022 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
1024 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
1025 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
1026 when first encountering the directory.
1030 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
1031 output; POSIX requires this.
1033 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
1034 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
1036 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
1038 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
1039 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
1041 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
1042 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
1044 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
1045 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
1046 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1047 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1048 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1049 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1050 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1052 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1053 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1054 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1056 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1057 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1059 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1061 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1063 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1064 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1065 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1066 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1068 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1072 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1073 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1074 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1075 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1076 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1078 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1079 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1080 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1082 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1083 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1085 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1086 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1088 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1089 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1090 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1091 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1092 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1094 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1095 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1097 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1098 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1100 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1102 nocreat do not create the output file
1103 excl fail if the output file already exists
1104 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1105 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1107 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1109 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1110 direct use direct I/O for data
1111 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1112 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1113 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1114 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1115 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1117 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1119 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1120 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1123 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1124 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1125 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1126 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1127 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1128 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1130 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1131 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1133 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1136 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1138 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1140 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1141 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1143 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1144 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1145 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1147 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1148 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1149 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1151 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1153 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1154 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1156 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1157 for compatibility with bash.
1159 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1161 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1162 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1163 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1164 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1166 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1167 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1169 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1170 ls supports TABSIZE.
1171 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1172 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1173 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1175 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1178 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1180 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1181 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1182 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1183 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1184 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1185 an offset, not as a file name.
1187 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1188 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1190 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1191 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1193 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1194 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1196 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1197 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1198 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1200 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1201 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1203 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1204 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1208 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1210 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1212 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1216 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1217 or more arguments between partitions.
1219 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1220 holes in the destination.
1222 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1223 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1224 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1225 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1226 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1227 terminates immediately.
1229 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1231 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1233 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1234 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1235 not the empty string.
1237 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1238 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1242 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1243 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1244 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1247 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1254 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1258 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1259 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1261 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1262 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1264 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1265 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1266 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1269 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1273 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1274 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1276 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1277 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1279 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1280 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1281 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1283 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1285 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1288 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1290 ** Configuration option
1292 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1293 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1297 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1298 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1302 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1303 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1304 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1307 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1308 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1309 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1310 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1311 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1312 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1313 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1316 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1320 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1321 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1322 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1324 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1325 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1327 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1329 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1330 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1331 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1332 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1334 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1336 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1337 not just the ones that reference directories
1339 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1340 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1342 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1343 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1344 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1346 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1347 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1348 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1349 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1350 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1351 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1353 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1358 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1359 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1361 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1363 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1365 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1367 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1368 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1370 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1371 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1373 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1375 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1379 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1381 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1383 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1384 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1385 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1386 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1387 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1389 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1390 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1392 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1393 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1395 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1396 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1398 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1399 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1400 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1404 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1405 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1406 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1407 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1408 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1409 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1410 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1411 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1412 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1413 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1414 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1415 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1416 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1417 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1419 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1421 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1422 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1424 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1426 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1428 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1429 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1431 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1433 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1434 without a trailing newline.
1436 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1437 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1439 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1442 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1446 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1448 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1450 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1451 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1452 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1453 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1455 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1457 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1458 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1459 be printed without leading spaces.
1461 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1462 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1467 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1468 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1469 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1471 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1473 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1474 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1476 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1477 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1479 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1480 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1482 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1484 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1486 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1488 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1489 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1491 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1493 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1495 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1496 byte offsets are specified.
1499 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1502 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1505 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1506 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1507 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1508 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1509 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1510 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1511 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1512 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1513 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1514 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1515 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1516 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1517 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1518 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1519 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1520 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1521 directory where M has write access.
1522 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1523 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1524 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1527 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1528 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1529 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1530 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1531 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1532 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1533 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1534 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1535 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1536 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1537 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1538 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1539 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1540 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1541 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1542 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1543 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1544 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1545 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1546 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1547 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1548 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1549 appeared one additional time.
1551 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1552 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1553 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1554 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1557 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1558 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1559 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1560 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1561 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1562 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1563 if there were more than 338.
1565 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1566 - false --help now exits nonzero
1569 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1570 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1571 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1572 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1575 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1576 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1577 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1578 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1579 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1582 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1583 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1584 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1585 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1586 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1587 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1588 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1591 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1592 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1593 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1594 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1595 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1596 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1598 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1599 under certain unusual conditions
1600 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1601 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1604 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1605 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1606 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1607 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1608 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1609 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1610 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1611 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1612 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1613 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1614 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1615 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1616 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1617 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1618 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1619 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1622 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1623 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1626 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1627 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1628 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1629 involving hard-linked directories
1630 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1631 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1632 character-special and block files
1635 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1636 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1637 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1638 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1639 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1640 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1641 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1642 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1643 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1645 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1646 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1647 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1648 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1649 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1650 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1651 specified on the command line.
1652 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1653 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1654 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1655 the first file untouched.
1656 * readlink: new program
1657 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1658 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1659 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1660 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1661 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1662 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1665 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1666 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1667 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1668 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1669 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1670 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1671 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1672 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1673 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1674 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1675 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1676 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1678 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1679 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1680 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1682 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1683 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1684 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1685 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1686 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1687 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1688 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1689 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1692 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1693 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1696 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1697 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1698 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1699 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1700 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1701 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1702 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1705 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1706 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1708 ========================================================================
1709 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1710 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1713 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1715 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1716 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1717 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1718 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1719 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1720 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1721 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1722 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1723 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1724 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1725 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1726 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1728 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1729 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1730 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1731 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1733 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1736 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1738 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1739 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1740 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1741 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1742 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1743 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1744 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1747 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1748 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1749 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1750 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1751 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1752 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1753 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1754 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1755 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1756 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1757 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1758 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1759 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1760 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1761 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1762 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1764 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1765 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1767 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1768 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1769 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1770 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1771 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1772 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1774 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1775 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1776 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1777 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1778 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1779 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1780 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1782 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1783 the source files in the following example:
1784 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1785 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1786 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1787 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1788 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1789 links between source files with --preserve=links
1790 * cp accepts new options:
1791 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1792 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1793 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1794 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1795 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1796 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1797 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1798 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1799 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1801 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1802 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1803 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1804 even though it's older than dest.
1805 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1806 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1807 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1808 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1809 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1811 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1812 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1813 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1814 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1815 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1816 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1817 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1819 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1820 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1821 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1823 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1824 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1825 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1826 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1827 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1828 This is the default.
1830 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1831 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1832 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1833 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1834 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1836 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1839 ========================================================================
1840 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1841 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1844 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1845 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1847 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1848 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1849 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1850 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1851 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1853 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1854 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1855 that specifies a non-directory
1858 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1859 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1860 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1861 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1862 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1863 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1864 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1865 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1866 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1867 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1868 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1869 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1870 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1871 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1872 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1873 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1874 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1875 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1876 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1877 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1878 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1879 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1880 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1881 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1883 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1884 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1885 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1887 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1889 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1890 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1892 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1893 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1894 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1895 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1896 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1898 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1899 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1900 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1901 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1902 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1904 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1906 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1907 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1908 * still more portability fixes
1909 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1910 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1912 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1914 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1916 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1918 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1919 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1920 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1921 there is any time remaining
1922 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1924 ========================================================================
1925 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1926 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1928 This package began as the union of the following:
1929 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1931 ========================================================================
1933 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1936 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1937 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1938 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1939 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1940 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1941 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.