1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9+ (????-??-??) [stable]
7 Add SELinux support (FIXME: add details here)
9 uniq accepts a new option: --zero-terminated (-z). As with the sort
10 option of the same name, this makes uniq consume and produce
11 NUL-terminated lines rather than newline-terminated lines.
15 "cut -f 2-0" now fails; before, it was equivalent to "cut -f 2-"
17 cut now diagnoses the '-' in "cut -f -" as an invalid range, rather
18 than interpreting it as the unlimited range, "1-".
20 ls -x DIR would sometimes output the wrong string in place of the
21 first entry. [introduced in coreutils-6.8]
23 ls --color would mistakenly color a dangling symlink as if it were
24 a regular symlink. This would happen only when the dangling symlink
25 was not a command-line argument and in a directory with d_type support.
26 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
28 ls --color, (with a custom LS_COLORS envvar value including the
29 ln=target attribute) would mistakenly output the string "target"
30 before the name of each symlink. [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
32 split --line-bytes=N (-C N) no longer creates an empty file
33 [this bug is present at least as far back as textutils-1.22 (Jan, 1997)]
35 tr -c no longer aborts when translating with Set2 larger than the
36 complement of Set1. [introduced with the original version, in 1992]
38 ** Improved robustness
40 stty no longer silently accepts certain invalid hex values
41 in its 35-colon commmand-line argument
44 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.9 (2007-03-22) [stable]
48 cp -x (--one-file-system) would fail to set mount point permissions
50 The default block size and output format for df -P are now unaffected by
51 the DF_BLOCK_SIZE, BLOCK_SIZE, and BLOCKSIZE environment variables. It
52 is still affected by POSIXLY_CORRECT, though.
54 Using pr -m -s (i.e. merging files, with TAB as the output separator)
55 no longer inserts extraneous spaces between output columns.
58 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.8 (2007-02-24) [not-unstable]
62 chgrp, chmod, and chown now honor the --preserve-root option.
63 Before, they would warn, yet continuing traversing and operating on /.
65 chmod no longer fails in an environment (e.g., a chroot) with openat
66 support but with insufficient /proc support.
68 "cp --parents F/G D" no longer creates a directory D/F when F is not
69 a directory (and F/G is therefore invalid).
71 "cp --preserve=mode" would create directories that briefly had
72 too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when copying a
73 directory with permissions 777 the destination directory might
74 temporarily be setgid on some file systems, which would allow other
75 users to create subfiles with the same group as the directory. Fix
76 similar problems with 'install' and 'mv'.
78 cut no longer dumps core for usage like "cut -f2- f1 f2" with two or
79 more file arguments. This was due to a double-free bug, introduced
82 dd bs= operands now silently override any later ibs= and obs=
83 operands, as POSIX and tradition require.
85 "ls -FRL" always follows symbolic links on Linux. Introduced in
88 A cross-partition "mv /etc/passwd ~" (by non-root) now prints
89 a reasonable diagnostic. Before, it would print this:
90 "mv: cannot remove `/etc/passwd': Not a directory".
92 pwd and "readlink -e ." no longer fail unnecessarily when a parent
93 directory is unreadable.
95 "rm -rf /etc/passwd" (run by non-root) now prints a diagnostic.
96 Before it would print nothing.
98 "rm --interactive=never F" no longer prompts for an unwritable F
102 sort's new --compress-program=PROG option specifies a compression
103 program to use when writing and reading temporary files.
104 This can help save both time and disk space when sorting large inputs.
106 sort accepts the new option -C, which acts like -c except no diagnostic
107 is printed. Its --check option now accepts an optional argument, and
108 --check=quiet and --check=silent are now aliases for -C, while
109 --check=diagnose-first is an alias for -c or plain --check.
112 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.7 (2006-12-08) [stable]
116 When cp -p copied a file with special mode bits set, the same bits
117 were set on the copy even when ownership could not be preserved.
118 This could result in files that were setuid to the wrong user.
119 To fix this, special mode bits are now set in the copy only if its
120 ownership is successfully preserved. Similar problems were fixed
121 with mv when copying across file system boundaries. This problem
122 affects all versions of coreutils through 6.6.
124 cp --preserve=ownership would create output files that temporarily
125 had too-generous permissions in some cases. For example, when
126 copying a file with group A and mode 644 into a group-B sticky
127 directory, the output file was briefly readable by group B.
128 Fix similar problems with cp options like -p that imply
129 --preserve=ownership, with install -d when combined with either -o
130 or -g, and with mv when copying across file system boundaries.
131 This bug affects coreutils 6.0 through 6.6.
133 du --one-file-system (-x) would skip subdirectories of any directory
134 listed as second or subsequent command line argument. This bug affects
135 coreutils-6.4, 6.5 and 6.6.
138 * Noteworthy changes in release 6.6 (2006-11-22) [stable]
142 ls would segfault (dereference a NULL pointer) for a file with a
143 nameless group or owner. This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.5.
145 A bug in the latest official m4/gettext.m4 (from gettext-0.15)
146 made configure fail to detect gettext support, due to the unusual
147 way in which coreutils uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT.
149 ** Improved robustness
151 Now, du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) honor a
152 trailing slash in the name of a symlink-to-directory even on
153 Solaris 9, by working around its buggy fstatat implementation.
156 * Major changes in release 6.5 (2006-11-19) [stable]
160 du (and the other fts clients: chmod, chgrp, chown) would exit early
161 when encountering an inaccessible directory on a system with native
162 openat support (i.e., linux-2.6.16 or newer along with glibc-2.4
163 or newer). This bug was introduced with the switch to gnulib's
164 openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
166 "ln --backup f f" now produces a sensible diagnostic
170 rm accepts a new option: --one-file-system
173 * Major changes in release 6.4 (2006-10-22) [stable]
177 chgrp and chown would malfunction when invoked with both -R and -H and
178 with one or more of the following: --preserve-root, --verbose, --changes,
179 --from=o:g (chown only). This bug was introduced with the switch to
180 gnulib's openat-based variant of fts, for coreutils-6.0.
182 cp --backup dir1 dir2, would rename an existing dir2/dir1 to dir2/dir1~.
183 This bug was introduced in coreutils-6.0.
185 With --force (-f), rm no longer fails for ENOTDIR.
186 For example, "rm -f existing-non-directory/anything" now exits
187 successfully, ignoring the error about a nonexistent file.
190 * Major changes in release 6.3 (2006-09-30) [stable]
192 ** Improved robustness
194 pinky no longer segfaults on Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) due to a
195 buggy native getaddrinfo function.
197 rm works around a bug in Darwin 7.9.0 (MacOS X 10.3.9) that would
198 sometimes keep it from removing all entries in a directory on an HFS+
199 or NFS-mounted partition.
201 sort would fail to handle very large input (around 40GB) on systems with a
202 mkstemp function that returns a file descriptor limited to 32-bit offsets.
206 chmod would fail unnecessarily in an unusual case: when an initially-
207 inaccessible argument is rendered accessible by chmod's action on a
208 preceding command line argument. This bug also affects chgrp, but
209 it is harder to demonstrate. It does not affect chown. The bug was
210 introduced with the switch from explicit recursion to the use of fts
211 in coreutils-5.1.0 (2003-10-15).
213 cp -i and mv -i occasionally neglected to prompt when the copy or move
214 action was bound to fail. This bug dates back to before fileutils-4.0.
216 With --verbose (-v), cp and mv would sometimes generate no output,
217 or neglect to report file removal.
219 For the "groups" command:
221 "groups" no longer prefixes the output with "user :" unless more
222 than one user is specified; this is for compatibility with BSD.
224 "groups user" now exits nonzero when it gets a write error.
226 "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
228 shuf would infloop, given 8KB or more of piped input
232 Versions of chmod, chown, chgrp, du, and rm (tools that use openat etc.)
233 compiled for Solaris 8 now also work when run on Solaris 10.
236 * Major changes in release 6.2 (2006-09-18) [stable candidate]
238 ** Changes in behavior
240 mkdir -p and install -d (or -D) now use a method that forks a child
241 process if the working directory is unreadable and a later argument
242 uses a relative file name. This avoids some race conditions, but it
243 means you may need to kill two processes to stop these programs.
245 rm now rejects attempts to remove the root directory, e.g., `rm -fr /'
246 now fails without removing anything. Likewise for any file name with
247 a final `./' or `../' component.
249 tail now ignores the -f option if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, no file
250 operand is given, and standard input is any FIFO; formerly it did
253 ** Infrastructure changes
255 Coreutils now uses gnulib via the gnulib-tool script.
256 If you check the source out from CVS, then follow the instructions
257 in README-cvs. Although this represents a large change to the
258 infrastructure, it should cause no change in how the tools work.
262 cp --backup no longer fails when the last component of a source file
265 "ls --color" would highlight other-writable and sticky directories
266 no differently than regular directories on a file system with
267 dirent.d_type support.
269 "mv -T --verbose --backup=t A B" now prints the " (backup: B.~1~)"
270 suffix when A and B are directories as well as when they are not.
272 mv and "cp -r" no longer fail when invoked with two arguments
273 where the first one names a directory and the second name ends in
274 a slash and doesn't exist. E.g., "mv dir B/", for nonexistent B,
275 now succeeds, once more. This bug was introduced in coreutils-5.3.0.
278 * Major changes in release 6.1 (2006-08-19) [unstable]
280 ** Changes in behavior
282 df now considers BSD "kernfs" file systems to be dummies
286 printf now supports the 'I' flag on hosts whose underlying printf
287 implementations support 'I', e.g., "printf %Id 2".
291 cp --sparse preserves sparseness at the end of a file, even when
292 the file's apparent size is not a multiple of its block size.
293 [introduced with the original design, in fileutils-4.0r, 2000-04-29]
295 df (with a command line argument) once again prints its header
296 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
298 ls -CF would misalign columns in some cases involving non-stat'able files
299 [introduced in coreutils-6.0]
301 * Major changes in release 6.0 (2006-08-15) [unstable]
303 ** Improved robustness
305 df: if the file system claims to have more available than total blocks,
306 report the number of used blocks as being "total - available"
307 (a negative number) rather than as garbage.
309 dircolors: a new autoconf run-test for AIX's buggy strndup function
310 prevents malfunction on that system; may also affect cut, expand,
313 fts no longer changes the current working directory, so its clients
314 (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer malfunction under extreme conditions.
316 pwd and other programs using lib/getcwd.c work even on file systems
317 where dirent.d_ino values are inconsistent with those from stat.st_ino.
319 rm's core is now reentrant: rm --recursive (-r) now processes
320 hierarchies without changing the working directory at all.
322 ** Changes in behavior
324 basename and dirname now treat // as different from / on platforms
325 where the two are distinct.
327 chmod, install, and mkdir now preserve a directory's set-user-ID and
328 set-group-ID bits unless you explicitly request otherwise. E.g.,
329 `chmod 755 DIR' and `chmod u=rwx,go=rx DIR' now preserve DIR's
330 set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits instead of clearing them, and
331 similarly for `mkdir -m 755 DIR' and `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx DIR'. To
332 clear the bits, mention them explicitly in a symbolic mode, e.g.,
333 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,-s DIR'. To set them, mention them explicitly
334 in either a symbolic or a numeric mode, e.g., `mkdir -m 2755 DIR',
335 `mkdir -m u=rwx,go=rx,g+s' DIR. This change is for convenience on
336 systems where these bits inherit from parents. Unfortunately other
337 operating systems are not consistent here, and portable scripts
338 cannot assume the bits are set, cleared, or preserved, even when the
339 bits are explicitly mentioned. For example, OpenBSD 3.9 `mkdir -m
340 777 D' preserves D's setgid bit but `chmod 777 D' clears it.
341 Conversely, Solaris 10 `mkdir -m 777 D', `mkdir -m g-s D', and
342 `chmod 0777 D' all preserve D's setgid bit, and you must use
343 something like `chmod g-s D' to clear it.
345 `cp --link --no-dereference' now works also on systems where the
346 link system call cannot create a hard link to a symbolic link.
347 This change has no effect on systems with a Linux-based kernel.
349 csplit and nl now use POSIX syntax for regular expressions, not
350 Emacs syntax. As a result, character classes like [[:print:]] and
351 interval expressions like A\{1,9\} now have their usual meaning,
352 . no longer matches the null character, and \ must precede the + and
355 date: a command like date -d '2006-04-23 21 days ago' would print
356 the wrong date in some time zones. (see the test for an example)
360 df now considers "none" and "proc" file systems to be dummies and
361 therefore does not normally display them. Also, inaccessible file
362 systems (which can be caused by shadowed mount points or by
363 chrooted bind mounts) are now dummies, too.
365 df now fails if it generates no output, so you can inspect the
366 exit status of a command like "df -t ext3 -t reiserfs DIR" to test
367 whether DIR is on a file system of type "ext3" or "reiserfs".
369 expr no longer complains about leading ^ in a regular expression
370 (the anchor is ignored), or about regular expressions like A** (the
371 second "*" is ignored). expr now exits with status 2 (not 3) for
372 errors it detects in the expression's values; exit status 3 is now
373 used only for internal errors (such as integer overflow, which expr
376 install and mkdir now implement the X permission symbol correctly,
377 e.g., `mkdir -m a+X dir'; previously the X was ignored.
379 install now creates parent directories with mode u=rwx,go=rx (755)
380 instead of using the mode specified by the -m option; and it does
381 not change the owner or group of parent directories. This is for
382 compatibility with BSD and closes some race conditions.
384 ln now uses different (and we hope clearer) diagnostics when it fails.
385 ln -v now acts more like FreeBSD, so it generates output only when
386 successful and the output is easier to parse.
388 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
389 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
390 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
391 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
393 mkfifo and mknod no longer set special mode bits (setuid, setgid,
394 and sticky) with the -m option.
396 nohup's usual diagnostic now more precisely specifies the I/O
397 redirections, e.g., "ignoring input and appending output to
398 nohup.out". Also, nohup now redirects stderr to nohup.out (or
399 $HOME/nohup.out) if stdout is closed and stderr is a tty; this is in
400 response to Open Group XCU ERN 71.
402 rm --interactive now takes an optional argument, although the
403 default of using no argument still acts like -i.
405 rm no longer fails to remove an empty, unreadable directory
409 seq defaults to a minimal fixed point format that does not lose
410 information if seq's operands are all fixed point decimal numbers.
411 You no longer need the `-f%.f' in `seq -f%.f 1048575 1024 1050623',
412 for example, since the default format now has the same effect.
414 seq now lets you use %a, %A, %E, %F, and %G formats.
416 seq now uses long double internally rather than double.
418 sort now reports incompatible options (e.g., -i and -n) rather than
419 silently ignoring one of them.
421 stat's --format=FMT option now works the way it did before 5.3.0:
422 FMT is automatically newline terminated. The first stable release
423 containing this change was 5.92.
425 stat accepts the new option --printf=FMT, where FMT is *not*
426 automatically newline terminated.
428 stat: backslash escapes are interpreted in a format string specified
429 via --printf=FMT, but not one specified via --format=FMT. That includes
430 octal (\ooo, at most three octal digits), hexadecimal (\xhh, one or
431 two hex digits), and the standard sequences (\a, \b, \f, \n, \r, \t,
434 With no operand, 'tail -f' now silently ignores the '-f' only if
435 standard input is a FIFO or pipe and POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
436 Formerly, it ignored the '-f' when standard input was a FIFO, pipe,
439 ** Scheduled for removal
441 ptx's --copyright (-C) option is scheduled for removal in 2007, and
442 now evokes a warning. Use --version instead.
444 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
445 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
446 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
447 command to unlink a directory.
449 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
450 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
451 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
452 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
456 base64: base64 encoding and decoding (RFC 3548) functionality.
457 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
458 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
459 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
460 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
461 shuf: Shuffle lines of text.
465 chgrp now supports --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default),
466 as it was documented to do, and just as chmod, chown, and rm do.
468 New dd iflag= and oflag= flags:
470 'directory' causes dd to fail unless the file is a directory, on
471 hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version 2.1.126 and
472 later). This has limited utility but is present for completeness.
474 'noatime' causes dd to read a file without updating its access
475 time, on hosts that support this (e.g., Linux kernels, version
478 'nolinks' causes dd to fail if the file has multiple hard links,
479 on hosts that support this (e.g., Solaris 10 and later).
481 ls accepts the new option --group-directories-first, to make it
482 list directories before files.
484 rm now accepts the -I (--interactive=once) option. This new option
485 prompts once if rm is invoked recursively or if more than three
486 files are being deleted, which is less intrusive than -i prompting
487 for every file, but provides almost the same level of protection
490 shred and sort now accept the --random-source option.
492 sort now accepts the --random-sort (-R) option and `R' ordering option.
494 sort now supports obsolete usages like "sort +1 -2" unless
495 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set. However, when conforming to POSIX
496 1003.1-2001 "sort +1" still sorts the file named "+1".
498 wc accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
499 list of NUL-terminated file names.
503 cat with any of the options, -A -v -e -E -T, when applied to a
504 file in /proc or /sys (linux-specific), would truncate its output,
505 usually printing nothing.
507 cp -p would fail in a /proc-less chroot, on some systems
509 When `cp -RL' encounters the same directory more than once in the
510 hierarchy beneath a single command-line argument, it no longer confuses
511 them with hard-linked directories.
513 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer fail due to
514 a double-free bug -- it could be triggered by making a directory
515 inaccessible while e.g., du is traversing the hierarchy under it.
517 fts-using tools (chmod, chown, chgrp, du) no longer misinterpret
518 a very long symlink chain as a dangling symlink. Before, such a
519 misinterpretation would cause these tools not to diagnose an ELOOP error.
521 ls --indicator-style=file-type would sometimes stat a symlink
524 ls --file-type worked like --indicator-style=slash (-p),
525 rather than like --indicator-style=file-type.
527 mv: moving a symlink into the place of an existing non-directory is
528 now done atomically; before, mv would first unlink the destination.
530 mv -T DIR EMPTY_DIR no longer fails unconditionally. Also, mv can
531 now remove an empty destination directory: mkdir -p a b/a; mv a b
533 rm (on systems with openat) can no longer exit before processing
534 all command-line arguments.
536 rm is no longer susceptible to a few low-probability memory leaks.
538 rm -r no longer fails to remove an inaccessible and empty directory
540 rm -r's cycle detection code can no longer be tricked into reporting
541 a false positive (introduced in fileutils-4.1.9).
543 shred --remove FILE no longer segfaults on Gentoo systems
545 sort would fail for large inputs (~50MB) on systems with a buggy
546 mkstemp function. sort and tac now use the replacement mkstemp
547 function, and hence are no longer subject to limitations (of 26 or 32,
548 on the maximum number of files from a given template) on HP-UX 10.20,
549 SunOS 4.1.4, Solaris 2.5.1 and OSF1/Tru64 V4.0F&V5.1.
551 tail -f once again works on a file with the append-only
552 attribute (affects at least Linux ext2, ext3, xfs file systems)
554 * Major changes in release 5.97 (2006-06-24) [stable]
555 * Major changes in release 5.96 (2006-05-22) [stable]
556 * Major changes in release 5.95 (2006-05-12) [stable]
557 * Major changes in release 5.94 (2006-02-13) [stable]
559 [see the b5_9x branch for details]
561 * Major changes in release 5.93 (2005-11-06) [stable]
565 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
566 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
568 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
569 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
571 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
572 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
574 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
575 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
577 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
578 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
580 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
582 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
583 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
584 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
587 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
589 ** Build-related bug fixes
591 installing .mo files would fail
594 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
598 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
600 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
603 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
607 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
608 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
612 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
614 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
615 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
617 ** Deprecated options
619 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
620 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
622 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
626 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
628 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
629 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
630 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
631 conforming to older POSIX versions.
633 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
636 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
642 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
647 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
649 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
651 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
652 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
653 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
655 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
656 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
657 problematic usages. These include:
659 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
660 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
661 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
662 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
663 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
664 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
665 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
666 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
667 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
669 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
670 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
672 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
673 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
674 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
675 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
677 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
678 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
679 between binary and text files.
681 The following programs now always use text input/output:
685 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
689 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
690 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
693 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
695 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
696 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
698 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
699 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
700 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
702 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
704 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
706 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
707 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
708 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
712 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
714 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
715 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
717 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
718 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
719 blocks until F contains N blocks.
723 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
724 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
728 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
729 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
730 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
734 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
735 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
739 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
741 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
743 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
747 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
748 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
749 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
751 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
752 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
753 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
754 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
755 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
757 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
761 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
762 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
763 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
765 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
767 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
768 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
769 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
770 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
772 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
774 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
775 rather than silently wrapping around.
777 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
778 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
780 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
781 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
783 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
784 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
785 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
788 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
790 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
792 ** Improved robustness
794 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
795 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
796 no matter how large the result.
798 ** Improved portability
800 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
801 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
803 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
805 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
806 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
807 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
809 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
810 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
814 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
815 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
817 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
819 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8601 (-I)
820 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
821 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
822 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
824 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
825 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
827 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
828 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
829 categories if not specified by dircolors.
831 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
833 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
834 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
836 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
837 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
839 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
841 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
842 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
844 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
845 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
847 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
848 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
849 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
851 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
853 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
855 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
859 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
861 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
862 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
863 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
865 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
866 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
868 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
869 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
870 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
872 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
873 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
875 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
876 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
877 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
878 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
880 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
881 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
883 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
884 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
885 the file system does not support it.
887 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
889 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
890 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
892 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
894 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
895 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
897 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
898 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
899 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
900 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
902 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
903 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
906 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
907 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
908 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
909 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
911 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
912 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
913 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
914 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
916 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
917 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
919 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
921 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
922 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
923 reporting incorrect results.
927 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
928 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
930 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
933 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
935 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
936 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
938 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
939 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
941 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
944 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
945 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
946 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
947 the file name does not look like a page range.
949 printf has several changes:
951 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
952 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
954 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
955 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
956 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
958 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
959 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
962 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
963 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
965 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
966 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
968 "readlink -f" is more compatible with prior implementations
970 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
971 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
973 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
975 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
977 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
978 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
979 when first encountering the directory.
983 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
984 output; POSIX requires this.
986 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
987 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
989 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
991 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
992 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
994 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
995 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
997 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
998 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
999 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
1000 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
1001 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
1002 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
1003 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
1005 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
1006 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
1007 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
1009 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
1010 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
1012 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
1014 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
1016 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
1017 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
1018 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
1019 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
1021 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
1025 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
1026 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
1027 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
1028 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
1029 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
1031 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
1032 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
1033 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
1035 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
1036 is longer than PATH_MAX.
1038 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
1039 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
1041 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
1042 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
1043 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
1044 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
1045 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
1047 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
1048 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
1050 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
1051 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
1053 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
1055 nocreat do not create the output file
1056 excl fail if the output file already exists
1057 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
1058 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
1060 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
1062 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
1063 direct use direct I/O for data
1064 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
1065 sync likewise, but also for metadata
1066 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
1067 nofollow do not follow symlinks
1068 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
1070 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
1072 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
1073 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
1076 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
1077 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
1078 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
1079 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
1080 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
1081 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
1083 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
1084 list of NUL-terminated file names.
1086 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
1089 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
1091 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
1093 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
1094 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
1096 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
1097 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
1098 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
1100 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
1101 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
1102 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
1104 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
1106 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
1107 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
1109 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
1110 for compatibility with bash.
1112 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
1114 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
1115 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
1116 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
1117 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
1119 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
1120 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
1122 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
1123 ls supports TABSIZE.
1124 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
1125 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
1126 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
1128 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
1131 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
1133 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
1134 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
1135 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
1136 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
1137 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
1138 an offset, not as a file name.
1140 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
1141 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
1143 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
1144 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
1146 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
1147 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
1149 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
1150 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
1151 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
1153 readlink accepts new options: --canonicalize-existing (-e)
1154 and --canonicalize-missing (-m).
1156 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
1157 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
1161 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
1163 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
1165 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
1169 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
1170 or more arguments between partitions.
1172 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
1173 holes in the destination.
1175 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
1176 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
1177 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
1178 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
1179 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
1180 terminates immediately.
1182 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
1184 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
1186 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
1187 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
1188 not the empty string.
1190 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
1191 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
1195 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
1196 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
1197 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
1200 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
1207 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
1211 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
1212 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
1214 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
1215 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
1217 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
1218 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
1219 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
1222 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
1226 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
1227 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
1229 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
1230 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
1232 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
1233 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
1234 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
1236 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
1238 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
1241 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
1243 ** Configuration option
1245 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
1246 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
1250 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
1251 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
1255 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
1256 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
1257 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
1260 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
1261 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
1262 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
1263 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
1264 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
1265 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1266 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1269 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
1273 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
1274 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
1275 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
1277 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
1278 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
1280 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
1282 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
1283 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
1284 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
1285 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
1287 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
1289 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
1290 not just the ones that reference directories
1292 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
1293 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
1295 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
1296 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
1297 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
1299 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
1300 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
1301 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
1302 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
1303 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
1304 ragged when a datum was too wide.
1306 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
1311 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
1312 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
1314 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
1316 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
1318 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
1320 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
1321 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
1323 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
1324 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
1326 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
1328 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
1332 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
1334 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
1336 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
1337 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
1338 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
1339 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
1340 resolution is the best we can do right now.
1342 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
1343 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
1345 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
1346 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
1348 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
1349 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
1351 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
1352 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
1353 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
1357 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
1358 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
1359 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
1360 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
1361 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
1362 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
1363 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
1364 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
1365 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
1366 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
1367 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
1368 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
1369 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
1370 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
1372 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
1374 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
1375 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
1377 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
1379 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
1381 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
1382 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
1384 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
1386 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
1387 without a trailing newline.
1389 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
1390 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
1392 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
1395 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
1399 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
1401 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
1403 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
1404 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
1405 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
1406 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
1408 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
1410 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
1411 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
1412 be printed without leading spaces.
1414 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
1415 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
1420 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
1421 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
1422 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
1424 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
1426 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
1427 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
1429 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
1430 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
1432 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
1433 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
1435 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
1437 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
1439 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
1441 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
1442 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
1444 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
1446 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1448 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
1449 byte offsets are specified.
1452 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
1455 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
1458 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
1459 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
1460 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
1461 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
1462 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
1463 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
1464 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
1465 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
1466 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
1467 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
1468 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
1469 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
1470 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
1471 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
1472 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
1473 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
1474 directory where M has write access.
1475 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
1476 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
1477 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
1480 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
1481 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
1482 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
1483 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
1484 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
1485 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
1486 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
1487 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
1488 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
1489 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
1490 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
1491 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
1492 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
1493 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
1494 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
1495 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
1496 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
1497 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
1498 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
1499 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
1500 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
1501 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
1502 appeared one additional time.
1504 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
1505 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
1506 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
1507 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
1510 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
1511 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
1512 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
1513 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
1514 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
1515 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
1516 if there were more than 338.
1518 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
1519 - false --help now exits nonzero
1522 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
1523 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
1524 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
1525 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
1528 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
1529 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
1530 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
1531 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
1532 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
1535 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
1536 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
1537 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1538 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1539 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1540 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1541 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1544 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1545 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1546 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1547 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1548 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1549 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1551 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1552 under certain unusual conditions
1553 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1554 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1557 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1558 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1559 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1560 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1561 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1562 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1563 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1564 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1565 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1566 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1567 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1568 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1569 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1570 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1571 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1572 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1575 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1576 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1579 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1580 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1581 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1582 involving hard-linked directories
1583 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1584 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1585 character-special and block files
1588 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1589 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1590 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1591 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1592 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1593 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1594 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1595 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1596 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1598 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1599 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1600 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1601 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1602 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1603 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1604 specified on the command line.
1605 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1606 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1607 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1608 the first file untouched.
1609 * readlink: new program
1610 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1611 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1612 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1613 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1614 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1615 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1618 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1619 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1620 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1621 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1622 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1623 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1624 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1625 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1626 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1627 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1628 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1629 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1631 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1632 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1633 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1635 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1636 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1637 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1638 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1639 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1640 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1641 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1642 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1645 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1646 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1649 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1650 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1651 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1652 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1653 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1654 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1655 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1658 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1659 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1661 ========================================================================
1662 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1663 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1666 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1668 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1669 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1670 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1671 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1672 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1673 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1674 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1675 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1676 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1677 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1678 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1679 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1681 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1682 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1683 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1684 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1686 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1689 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1691 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1692 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1693 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1694 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1695 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1696 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1697 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1700 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1701 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1702 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1703 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1704 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1705 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1706 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1707 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1708 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1709 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1710 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1711 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1712 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1713 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1714 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1715 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1717 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1718 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1720 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1721 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1722 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1723 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1724 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1725 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1727 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1728 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1729 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1730 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1731 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1732 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1733 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1735 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1736 the source files in the following example:
1737 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1738 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1739 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1740 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1741 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1742 links between source files with --preserve=links
1743 * cp accepts new options:
1744 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1745 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1746 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1747 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1748 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1749 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1750 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1751 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1752 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1754 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1755 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1756 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1757 even though it's older than dest.
1758 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1759 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1760 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1761 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1762 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1764 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1765 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1766 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1767 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1768 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1769 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1770 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1772 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1773 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1774 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1776 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1777 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1778 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1779 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1780 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1781 This is the default.
1783 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1784 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1785 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1786 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1787 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1789 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1792 ========================================================================
1793 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1794 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1797 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1798 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1800 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1801 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1802 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1803 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1804 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1806 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1807 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1808 that specifies a non-directory
1811 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1812 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1813 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1814 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1815 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1816 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1817 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1818 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1819 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1820 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1821 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1822 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1823 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1824 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1825 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1826 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1827 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1828 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1829 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1830 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1831 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1832 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1833 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1834 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1836 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1837 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1838 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1840 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1842 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1843 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1845 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1846 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1847 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1848 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1849 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1851 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1852 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1853 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1854 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1855 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1857 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1859 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1860 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1861 * still more portability fixes
1862 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1863 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1865 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1867 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1869 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1871 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1872 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1873 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1874 there is any time remaining
1875 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1877 ========================================================================
1878 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1879 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1881 This package began as the union of the following:
1882 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.
1884 ========================================================================
1886 Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Free Software
1889 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
1890 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or
1891 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
1892 Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover
1893 Texts. A copy of the license is included in the ``GNU Free
1894 Documentation License'' file as part of this distribution.