1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-??) [stable]
5 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
9 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
10 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
14 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
16 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
17 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
21 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
22 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
24 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
28 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
30 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
31 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
32 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
33 conforming to older POSIX versions.
35 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
38 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
44 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
49 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
51 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
53 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
54 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
55 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
57 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
58 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
59 problematic usages. These include:
61 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
62 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
63 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
64 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
65 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
66 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
67 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
68 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
69 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
71 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
72 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
74 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
75 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
76 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
77 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
79 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
80 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
81 between binary and text files.
83 The following programs now always use text input/output:
87 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
91 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
92 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
95 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
97 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
98 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
100 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
101 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
102 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
104 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
106 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
108 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
109 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
110 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
114 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
116 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
117 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
119 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
120 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
121 blocks until F contains N blocks.
125 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
126 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
130 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
131 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
132 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
136 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
137 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
141 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
143 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
145 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
149 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
150 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
151 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
153 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
154 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
155 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
156 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
157 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
159 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
163 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
164 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
165 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
167 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
169 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
170 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
171 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
172 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
174 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
176 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
177 rather than silently wrapping around.
179 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
180 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
182 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
183 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
185 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
186 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
187 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
190 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
192 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
194 ** Improved robustness
196 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
197 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
198 no matter how large the result.
200 ** Improved portability
202 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
203 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
205 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
207 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
208 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
209 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
211 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
212 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
216 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
217 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
219 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
221 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
222 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
223 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
224 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
226 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
227 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
229 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
230 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
231 categories if not specified by dircolors.
233 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
235 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
236 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
238 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
239 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
241 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
243 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
244 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
246 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
247 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
249 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
250 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
251 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
253 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
255 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
257 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
261 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
263 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
264 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
265 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
267 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
268 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
270 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
271 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
272 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
274 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
275 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
277 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
278 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
279 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
280 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
282 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
283 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
285 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
286 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
287 the file system does not support it.
289 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
291 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
292 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
294 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
296 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
297 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
299 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
300 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
301 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
302 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
304 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
305 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
308 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
309 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
310 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
311 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
313 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
314 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
315 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
316 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
318 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
319 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
321 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
323 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
324 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
325 reporting incorrect results.
329 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
330 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
332 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
335 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
337 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
338 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
340 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
341 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
343 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
346 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
347 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
348 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
349 the file name does not look like a page range.
351 printf has several changes:
353 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
354 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
356 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
357 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
358 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
360 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
361 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
364 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
365 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
367 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
368 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
370 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
371 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
373 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
375 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
377 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
378 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
379 when first encountering the directory.
383 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
384 output; POSIX requires this.
386 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
387 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
389 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
391 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
392 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
394 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
395 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
397 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
398 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
399 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
400 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
401 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
402 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
403 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
405 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
406 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
407 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
409 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
410 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
412 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
414 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
416 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
417 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
418 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
419 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
421 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
425 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
426 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
427 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
428 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
429 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
431 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
432 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
433 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
435 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
436 is longer than PATH_MAX.
438 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
439 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
441 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
442 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
443 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
444 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
445 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
447 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
448 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
450 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
451 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
453 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
455 nocreat do not create the output file
456 excl fail if the output file already exists
457 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
458 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
460 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
462 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
463 direct use direct I/O for data
464 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
465 sync likewise, but also for metadata
466 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
467 nofollow do not follow symlinks
468 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
470 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
472 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
473 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
476 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
477 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
478 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
479 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
480 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
481 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
483 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
484 list of NUL-terminated file names.
486 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
489 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
491 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
493 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
494 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
496 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
497 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
498 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
500 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
501 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
502 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
504 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
506 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
507 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
509 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
510 for compatibility with bash.
512 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
514 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
515 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
516 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
517 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
519 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
520 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
522 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
524 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
525 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
526 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
528 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
531 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
533 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
534 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
535 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
536 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
537 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
538 an offset, not as a file name.
540 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
541 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
543 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
544 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
546 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
547 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
549 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
550 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
551 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
553 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
554 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
558 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
560 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
562 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
566 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
567 or more arguments between partitions.
569 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
570 holes in the destination.
572 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
573 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
574 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
575 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
576 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
577 terminates immediately.
579 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
581 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
583 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
584 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
585 not the empty string.
587 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
588 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
592 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
593 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
594 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
597 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
604 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
608 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
609 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
611 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
612 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
614 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
615 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
616 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
619 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
623 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
624 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
626 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
627 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
629 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
630 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
631 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
633 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
635 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
638 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
640 ** Configuration option
642 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
643 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
647 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
648 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
652 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
653 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
654 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
657 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
658 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
659 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
660 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
661 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
662 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
663 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
666 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
670 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
671 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
672 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
674 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
675 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
677 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
679 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
680 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
681 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
682 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
684 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
686 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
687 not just the ones that reference directories
689 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
690 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
692 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
693 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
694 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
696 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
697 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
698 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
699 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
700 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
701 ragged when a datum was too wide.
703 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
708 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
709 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
711 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
713 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
715 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
717 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
718 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
720 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
721 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
723 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
725 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
729 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
731 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
733 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
734 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
735 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
736 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
737 resolution is the best we can do right now.
739 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
740 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
742 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
743 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
745 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
746 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
748 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
749 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
750 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
754 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
755 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
756 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
757 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
758 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
759 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
760 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
761 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
762 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
763 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
764 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
765 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
766 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
767 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
769 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
771 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
772 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
774 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
776 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
778 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
779 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
781 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
783 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
784 without a trailing newline.
786 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
787 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
789 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
792 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
796 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
798 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
800 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
801 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
802 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
803 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
805 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
807 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
808 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
809 be printed without leading spaces.
811 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
812 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
817 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
818 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
819 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
821 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
823 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
824 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
826 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
827 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
829 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
830 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
832 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
834 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
836 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
838 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
839 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
841 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
843 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
845 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
846 byte offsets are specified.
849 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
852 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
855 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
856 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
857 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
858 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
859 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
860 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
861 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
862 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
863 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
864 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
865 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
866 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
867 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
868 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
869 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
870 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
871 directory where M has write access.
872 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
873 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
874 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
877 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
878 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
879 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
880 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
881 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
882 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
883 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
884 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
885 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
886 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
887 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
888 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
889 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
890 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
891 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
892 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
893 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
894 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
895 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
896 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
897 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
898 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
899 appeared one additional time.
901 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
902 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
903 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
904 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
907 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
908 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
909 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
910 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
911 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
912 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
913 if there were more than 338.
915 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
916 - false --help now exits nonzero
919 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
920 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
921 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
922 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
925 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
926 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
927 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
928 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
929 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
932 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
933 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
934 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
935 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
936 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
937 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
938 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
941 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
942 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
943 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
944 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
945 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
946 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
948 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
949 under certain unusual conditions
950 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
951 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
954 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
955 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
956 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
957 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
958 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
959 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
960 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
961 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
962 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
963 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
964 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
965 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
966 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
967 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
968 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
969 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
972 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
973 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
976 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
977 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
978 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
979 involving hard-linked directories
980 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
981 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
982 character-special and block files
985 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
986 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
987 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
988 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
989 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
990 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
991 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
992 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
993 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
995 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
996 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
997 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
998 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
999 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1000 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1001 specified on the command line.
1002 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1003 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1004 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1005 the first file untouched.
1006 * readlink: new program
1007 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1008 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1009 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1010 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1011 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1012 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1015 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1016 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1017 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1018 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1019 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1020 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1021 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1022 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1023 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1024 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1025 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1026 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1028 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1029 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1030 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1032 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1033 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1034 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1035 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1036 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1037 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1038 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1039 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1042 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1043 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1046 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1047 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1048 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1049 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1050 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1051 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1052 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1055 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1056 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1058 ========================================================================
1059 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1060 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1063 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1065 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1066 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1067 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1068 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1069 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1070 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1071 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1072 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1073 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1074 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1075 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1076 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1078 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1079 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1080 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1081 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1083 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1086 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1088 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1089 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1090 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1091 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1092 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1093 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1094 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1097 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1098 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1099 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1100 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1101 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1102 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1103 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1104 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1105 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1106 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1107 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1108 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1109 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1110 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1111 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1112 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1114 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1115 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1117 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1118 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1119 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1120 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1121 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1122 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1124 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1125 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1126 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1127 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1128 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1129 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1130 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1132 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1133 the source files in the following example:
1134 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1135 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1136 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1137 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1138 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1139 links between source files with --preserve=links
1140 * cp accepts new options:
1141 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1142 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1143 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1144 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1145 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1146 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1147 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1148 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1149 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1151 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1152 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1153 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1154 even though it's older than dest.
1155 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1156 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1157 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1158 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1159 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1161 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1162 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1163 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1164 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1165 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1166 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1167 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1169 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1170 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1171 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1173 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1174 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1175 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1176 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1177 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1178 This is the default.
1180 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1181 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1182 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1183 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1184 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1186 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1189 ========================================================================
1190 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1191 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1194 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1195 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1197 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1198 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1199 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1200 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1201 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1203 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1204 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1205 that specifies a non-directory
1208 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1209 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1210 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1211 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1212 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1213 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1214 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1215 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1216 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1217 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1218 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1219 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1220 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1221 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1222 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1223 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1224 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1225 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1226 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1227 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1228 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1229 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1230 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1231 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1233 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1234 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1235 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1237 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1239 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1240 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1242 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1243 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1244 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1245 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1246 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1248 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1249 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1250 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1251 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1252 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1254 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1256 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1257 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1258 * still more portability fixes
1259 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1260 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1262 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1264 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1266 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1268 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1269 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1270 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1271 there is any time remaining
1272 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1274 ========================================================================
1275 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1276 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1278 This package began as the union of the following:
1279 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.