1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.90-cvs (2005-??-??) [unstable]
5 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
6 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
7 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
8 conforming to older POSIX versions.
10 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
13 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
19 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
24 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
26 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
28 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
29 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
30 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
32 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
33 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
34 problematic usages. These include:
36 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
37 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
38 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
39 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
40 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
41 tail - main.c tail main.c tail -- - main.c
42 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
43 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
44 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
46 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
47 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
48 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
49 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
51 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
52 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
53 between binary and text files.
55 The following programs now always use text input/output:
59 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
63 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
64 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
67 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
69 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
70 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
72 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
73 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
74 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
76 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
78 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
80 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
81 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
82 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
86 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
88 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
89 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
91 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
92 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
93 blocks until F contains N blocks.
97 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
98 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
102 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
103 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
104 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
108 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
109 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
113 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
115 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
117 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
121 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
122 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
123 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
125 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
126 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
127 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
128 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
129 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
131 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
135 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
136 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
137 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
139 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
141 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
142 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
143 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
144 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
146 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
148 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
149 rather than silently wrapping around.
151 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
152 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
154 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
155 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
157 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
158 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
159 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
162 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
164 ** Improved robustness
166 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
167 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
168 no matter how large the result.
170 ** Improved portability
172 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
173 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
175 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
177 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
178 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
179 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
181 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
182 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
186 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
187 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
189 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
191 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
192 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
193 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
194 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
196 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
197 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
199 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
201 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
202 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
204 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
205 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
207 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
209 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
210 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
212 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
213 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
215 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
216 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
217 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
219 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
221 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
223 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
227 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
229 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
230 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
231 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
233 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
234 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
236 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
237 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
238 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
240 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
241 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
243 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
244 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
245 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
246 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
248 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
249 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
251 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
252 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
253 the file system does not support it.
255 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
257 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
258 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
260 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
262 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
263 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
265 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
266 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
267 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
268 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
270 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
271 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
274 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
275 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
276 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
277 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
279 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
280 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
281 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
282 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
284 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
285 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
287 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
289 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
290 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
291 reporting incorrect results.
295 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
296 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
298 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
301 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
303 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
304 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
306 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
307 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
309 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
312 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
313 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
314 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
315 the file name does not look like a page range.
317 printf has several changes:
319 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
320 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
322 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
323 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
324 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
326 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
327 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
330 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
331 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
333 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
334 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
336 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
337 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
339 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
341 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
343 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
344 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
345 when first encountering the directory.
349 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
350 output; POSIX requires this.
352 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
353 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
355 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
357 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
358 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
360 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
361 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
363 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
364 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
365 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
366 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
367 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
368 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
369 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
371 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
372 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
373 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
375 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
376 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
378 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
380 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
382 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
383 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
384 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
385 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
387 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
391 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
392 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
393 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
394 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
395 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
397 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
398 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
399 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
401 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
402 is longer than PATH_MAX.
404 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
405 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
407 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
408 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
409 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
410 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
411 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
413 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
414 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
416 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
417 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
419 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
421 nocreat do not create the output file
422 excl fail if the output file already exists
423 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
424 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
426 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
428 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
429 direct use direct I/O for data
430 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
431 sync likewise, but also for metadata
432 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
433 nofollow do not follow symlinks
434 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
436 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
438 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
439 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
442 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
443 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
444 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
445 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
446 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
447 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
449 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
450 list of NUL-terminated file names.
452 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
455 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
457 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
459 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
460 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
462 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
463 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
464 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
466 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
467 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
468 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
470 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
472 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
473 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
475 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
476 for compatibility with bash.
478 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
480 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
481 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
482 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
483 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
485 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
486 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
488 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
490 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
491 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
492 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
494 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
497 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
499 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
500 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
501 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
502 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
503 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
504 an offset, not as a file name.
506 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
507 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
509 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
510 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
512 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
513 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
515 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
516 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
517 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
519 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
520 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
524 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
526 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
528 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
532 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
533 or more arguments between partitions.
535 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
536 holes in the destination.
538 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
539 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
540 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
541 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
542 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
543 terminates immediately.
545 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
547 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
549 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
550 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
551 not the empty string.
553 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
554 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
558 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
559 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
560 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
563 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
570 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
574 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
575 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
577 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
578 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
580 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
581 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
582 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
585 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
589 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
590 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
592 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
593 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
595 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
596 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
597 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
599 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
601 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
604 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
606 ** Configuration option
608 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
609 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
613 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
614 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
618 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
619 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
620 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
623 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
624 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
625 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
626 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
627 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
628 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
629 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
632 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
636 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
637 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
638 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
640 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
641 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
643 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
645 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
646 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
647 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
648 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
650 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
652 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
653 not just the ones that reference directories
655 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
656 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
658 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
659 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
660 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
662 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
663 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
664 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
665 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
666 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
667 ragged when a datum was too wide.
669 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
674 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
675 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
677 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
679 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
681 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
683 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
684 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
686 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
687 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
689 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
691 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
695 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
697 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
699 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
700 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
701 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
702 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
703 resolution is the best we can do right now.
705 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
706 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
708 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
709 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
711 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
712 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
714 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
715 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
716 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
720 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
721 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
722 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
723 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
724 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
725 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
726 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
727 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
728 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
729 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
730 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
731 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
732 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
733 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
735 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
737 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
738 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
740 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
742 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
744 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
745 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
747 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
749 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
750 without a trailing newline.
752 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
753 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
755 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
758 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
762 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
764 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
766 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
767 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
768 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
769 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
771 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
773 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
774 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
775 be printed without leading spaces.
777 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
778 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
783 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
784 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
785 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
787 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
789 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
790 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
792 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
793 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
795 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
796 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
798 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
800 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
802 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
804 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
805 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
807 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
809 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
811 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
812 byte offsets are specified.
815 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
818 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
821 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
822 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
823 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
824 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
825 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
826 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
827 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
828 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
829 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
830 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
831 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
832 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
833 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
834 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
835 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
836 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
837 directory where M has write access.
838 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
839 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
840 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
843 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
844 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
845 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
846 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
847 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
848 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
849 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
850 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
851 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
852 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
853 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
854 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
855 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
856 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
857 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
858 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
859 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
860 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
861 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
862 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
863 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
864 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
865 appeared one additional time.
867 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
868 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
869 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
870 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
873 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
874 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
875 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
876 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
877 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
878 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
879 if there were more than 338.
881 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
882 - false --help now exits nonzero
885 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
886 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
887 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
888 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
891 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
892 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
893 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
894 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
895 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
898 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
899 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
900 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
901 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
902 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
903 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
904 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
907 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
908 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
909 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
910 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
911 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
912 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
914 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
915 under certain unusual conditions
916 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
917 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
920 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
921 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
922 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
923 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
924 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
925 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
926 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
927 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
928 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
929 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
930 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
931 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
932 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
933 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
934 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
935 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
938 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
939 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
942 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
943 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
944 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
945 involving hard-linked directories
946 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
947 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
948 character-special and block files
951 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
952 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
953 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
954 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
955 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
956 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
957 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
958 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
959 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
961 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
962 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
963 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
964 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
965 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
966 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
967 specified on the command line.
968 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
969 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
970 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
971 the first file untouched.
972 * readlink: new program
973 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
974 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
975 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
976 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
977 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
978 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
981 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
982 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
983 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
984 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
985 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
986 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
987 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
988 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
989 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
990 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
991 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
992 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
994 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
995 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
996 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
998 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
999 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1000 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1001 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1002 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1003 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1004 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1005 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1008 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1009 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1012 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1013 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1014 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1015 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1016 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1017 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1018 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1021 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1022 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1024 ========================================================================
1025 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1026 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1029 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1031 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1032 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1033 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1034 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1035 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1036 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1037 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1038 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1039 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1040 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1041 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1042 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1044 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1045 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1046 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1047 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1049 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1052 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1054 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1055 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1056 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1057 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1058 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1059 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1060 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1063 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1064 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1065 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1066 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1067 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1068 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1069 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1070 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1071 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1072 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1073 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1074 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1075 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1076 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1077 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1078 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1080 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1081 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1083 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1084 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1085 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1086 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1087 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1088 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1090 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1091 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1092 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1093 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1094 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1095 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1096 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1098 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1099 the source files in the following example:
1100 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1101 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1102 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1103 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1104 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1105 links between source files with --preserve=links
1106 * cp accepts new options:
1107 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1108 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1109 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1110 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1111 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1112 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1113 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1114 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1115 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1117 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1118 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1119 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1120 even though it's older than dest.
1121 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1122 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1123 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1124 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1125 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1127 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1128 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1129 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1130 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1131 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1132 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1133 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1135 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1136 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1137 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1139 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1140 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1141 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1142 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1143 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1144 This is the default.
1146 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1147 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1148 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1149 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1150 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1152 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1155 ========================================================================
1156 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1157 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1160 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1161 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1163 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1164 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1165 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1166 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1167 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1169 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1170 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1171 that specifies a non-directory
1174 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1175 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1176 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1177 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1178 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1179 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1180 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1181 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1182 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1183 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1184 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1185 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1186 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1187 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1188 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1189 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1190 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1191 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1192 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1193 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1194 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1195 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1196 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1197 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1199 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1200 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1201 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1203 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1205 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1206 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1208 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1209 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1210 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1211 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1212 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1214 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1215 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1216 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1217 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1218 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1220 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1222 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1223 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1224 * still more portability fixes
1225 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1226 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1228 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1230 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1232 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1234 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1235 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1236 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1237 there is any time remaining
1238 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1240 ========================================================================
1241 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1242 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1244 This package began as the union of the following:
1245 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.