1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [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 - f tail f [see (*) below]
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 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
47 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
49 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
50 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
51 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
52 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
54 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
55 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
56 between binary and text files.
58 The following programs now always use text input/output:
62 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
66 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
67 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
70 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
72 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
73 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
75 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
76 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
77 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
79 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
81 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
83 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
84 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
85 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
89 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
91 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
92 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
94 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
95 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
96 blocks until F contains N blocks.
100 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
101 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
105 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
106 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
107 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
111 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
112 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
116 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
118 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
120 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
124 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
125 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
126 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
128 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
129 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
130 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
131 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
132 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
134 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
138 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
139 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
140 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
142 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
144 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
145 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
146 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
147 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
149 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
151 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
152 rather than silently wrapping around.
154 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
155 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
157 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
158 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
160 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
161 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
162 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
165 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
167 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
169 ** Improved robustness
171 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
172 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
173 no matter how large the result.
175 ** Improved portability
177 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
178 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
180 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
182 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
183 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
184 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
186 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
187 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
191 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
192 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
194 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
196 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
197 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
198 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
199 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
201 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
202 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
204 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
206 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
207 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
209 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
210 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
212 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
214 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
215 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
217 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
218 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
220 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
221 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
222 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
224 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
226 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
228 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
232 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
234 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
235 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
236 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
238 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
239 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
241 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
242 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
243 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
245 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
246 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
248 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
249 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
250 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
251 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
253 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
254 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
256 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
257 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
258 the file system does not support it.
260 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
262 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
263 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
265 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
267 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
268 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
270 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
271 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
272 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
273 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
275 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
276 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
279 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
280 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
281 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
282 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
284 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
285 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
286 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
287 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
289 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
290 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
292 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
294 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
295 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
296 reporting incorrect results.
300 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
301 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
303 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
306 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
308 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
309 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
311 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
312 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
314 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
317 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
318 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
319 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
320 the file name does not look like a page range.
322 printf has several changes:
324 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
325 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
327 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
328 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
329 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
331 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
332 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
335 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
336 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
338 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
339 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
341 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
342 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
344 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
346 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
348 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
349 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
350 when first encountering the directory.
354 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
355 output; POSIX requires this.
357 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
358 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
360 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
362 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
363 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
365 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
366 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
368 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
369 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
370 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
371 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
372 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
373 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
374 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
376 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
377 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
378 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
380 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
381 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
383 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
385 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
387 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
388 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
389 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
390 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
392 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
396 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
397 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
398 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
399 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
400 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
402 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
403 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
404 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
406 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
407 is longer than PATH_MAX.
409 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
410 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
412 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
413 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
414 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
415 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
416 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
418 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
419 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
421 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
422 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
424 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
426 nocreat do not create the output file
427 excl fail if the output file already exists
428 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
429 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
431 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
433 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
434 direct use direct I/O for data
435 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
436 sync likewise, but also for metadata
437 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
438 nofollow do not follow symlinks
439 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
441 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
443 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
444 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
447 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
448 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
449 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
450 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
451 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
452 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
454 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
455 list of NUL-terminated file names.
457 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
460 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
462 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
464 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
465 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
467 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
468 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
469 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
471 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
472 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
473 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
475 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
477 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
478 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
480 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
481 for compatibility with bash.
483 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
485 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
486 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
487 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
488 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
490 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
491 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
493 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
495 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
496 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
497 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
499 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
502 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
504 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
505 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
506 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
507 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
508 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
509 an offset, not as a file name.
511 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
512 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
514 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
515 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
517 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
518 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
520 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
521 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
522 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
524 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
525 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
529 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
531 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
533 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
537 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
538 or more arguments between partitions.
540 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
541 holes in the destination.
543 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
544 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
545 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
546 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
547 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
548 terminates immediately.
550 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
552 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
554 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
555 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
556 not the empty string.
558 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
559 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
563 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
564 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
565 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
568 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
575 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
579 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
580 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
582 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
583 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
585 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
586 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
587 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
590 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
594 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
595 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
597 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
598 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
600 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
601 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
602 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
604 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
606 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
609 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
611 ** Configuration option
613 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
614 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
618 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
619 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
623 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
624 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
625 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
628 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
629 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
630 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
631 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
632 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
633 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
634 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
637 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
641 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
642 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
643 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
645 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
646 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
648 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
650 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
651 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
652 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
653 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
655 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
657 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
658 not just the ones that reference directories
660 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
661 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
663 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
664 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
665 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
667 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
668 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
669 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
670 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
671 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
672 ragged when a datum was too wide.
674 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
679 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
680 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
682 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
684 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
686 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
688 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
689 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
691 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
692 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
694 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
696 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
700 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
702 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
704 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
705 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
706 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
707 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
708 resolution is the best we can do right now.
710 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
711 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
713 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
714 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
716 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
717 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
719 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
720 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
721 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
725 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
726 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
727 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
728 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
729 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
730 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
731 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
732 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
733 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
734 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
735 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
736 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
737 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
738 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
740 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
742 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
743 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
745 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
747 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
749 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
750 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
752 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
754 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
755 without a trailing newline.
757 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
758 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
760 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
763 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
767 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
769 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
771 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
772 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
773 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
774 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
776 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
778 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
779 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
780 be printed without leading spaces.
782 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
783 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
788 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
789 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
790 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
792 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
794 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
795 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
797 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
798 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
800 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
801 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
803 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
805 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
807 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
809 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
810 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
812 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
814 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
816 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
817 byte offsets are specified.
820 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
823 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
826 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
827 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
828 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
829 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
830 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
831 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
832 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
833 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
834 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
835 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
836 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
837 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
838 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
839 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
840 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
841 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
842 directory where M has write access.
843 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
844 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
845 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
848 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
849 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
850 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
851 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
852 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
853 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
854 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
855 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
856 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
857 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
858 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
859 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
860 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
861 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
862 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
863 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
864 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
865 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
866 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
867 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
868 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
869 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
870 appeared one additional time.
872 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
873 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
874 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
875 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
878 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
879 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
880 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
881 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
882 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
883 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
884 if there were more than 338.
886 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
887 - false --help now exits nonzero
890 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
891 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
892 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
893 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
896 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
897 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
898 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
899 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
900 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
903 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
904 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
905 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
906 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
907 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
908 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
909 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
912 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
913 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
914 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
915 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
916 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
917 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
919 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
920 under certain unusual conditions
921 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
922 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
925 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
926 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
927 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
928 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
929 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
930 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
931 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
932 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
933 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
934 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
935 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
936 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
937 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
938 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
939 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
940 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
943 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
944 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
947 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
948 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
949 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
950 involving hard-linked directories
951 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
952 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
953 character-special and block files
956 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
957 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
958 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
959 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
960 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
961 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
962 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
963 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
964 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
966 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
967 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
968 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
969 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
970 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
971 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
972 specified on the command line.
973 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
974 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
975 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
976 the first file untouched.
977 * readlink: new program
978 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
979 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
980 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
981 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
982 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
983 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
986 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
987 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
988 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
989 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
990 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
991 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
992 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
993 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
994 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
995 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
996 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
997 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
999 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1000 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1001 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1003 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1004 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1005 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1006 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1007 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1008 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1009 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1010 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1013 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1014 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1017 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1018 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1019 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1020 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1021 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1022 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1023 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1026 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1027 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1029 ========================================================================
1030 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1031 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1034 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1036 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1037 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1038 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1039 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1040 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1041 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1042 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1043 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1044 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1045 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1046 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1047 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1049 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1050 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1051 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1052 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1054 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1057 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1059 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1060 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1061 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1062 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1063 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1064 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1065 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1068 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1069 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1070 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1071 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1072 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1073 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1074 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1075 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1076 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1077 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1078 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1079 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1080 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1081 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1082 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1083 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1085 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1086 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1088 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1089 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1090 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1091 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1092 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1093 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1095 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1096 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1097 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1098 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1099 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1100 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1101 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1103 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1104 the source files in the following example:
1105 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1106 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1107 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1108 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1109 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1110 links between source files with --preserve=links
1111 * cp accepts new options:
1112 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1113 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1114 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1115 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1116 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1117 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1118 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1119 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1120 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1122 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1123 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1124 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1125 even though it's older than dest.
1126 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1127 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1128 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1129 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1130 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1132 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1133 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1134 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1135 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1136 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1137 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1138 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1140 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1141 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1142 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1144 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1145 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1146 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1147 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1148 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1149 This is the default.
1151 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1152 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1153 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1154 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1155 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1157 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1160 ========================================================================
1161 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1162 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1165 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1166 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1168 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1169 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1170 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1171 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1172 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1174 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1175 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1176 that specifies a non-directory
1179 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1180 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1181 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1182 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1183 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1184 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1185 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1186 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1187 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1188 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1189 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1190 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1191 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1192 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1193 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1194 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1195 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1196 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1197 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1198 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1199 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1200 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1201 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1202 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1204 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1205 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1206 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1208 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1210 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1211 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1213 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1214 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1215 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1216 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1217 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1219 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1220 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1221 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1222 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1223 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1225 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1227 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1228 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1229 * still more portability fixes
1230 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1231 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1233 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1235 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1237 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1239 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1240 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1241 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1242 there is any time remaining
1243 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1245 ========================================================================
1246 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1247 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1249 This package began as the union of the following:
1250 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.