1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 6.0-cvs (????-??-??) [unstable]
7 ls now defaults to --time-style='locale', not --time-style='posix-long-iso'.
8 However, the 'locale' time style now behaves like 'posix-long-iso'
9 if your locale settings appear to be messed up. This change
10 attempts to have the default be the best of both worlds.
12 ** Scheduled for removal
14 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
15 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
16 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
17 command to unlink a directory.
19 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
20 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
21 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
22 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
26 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
27 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
28 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
29 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
33 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
34 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
36 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
37 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
39 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
40 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
42 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
43 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
45 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
46 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
48 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
50 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
52 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
53 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
54 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
57 ** Build-related bug fixes
59 installing .mo files would fail
62 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
66 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
68 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
70 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
74 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
75 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
79 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
81 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
82 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
86 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
87 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
89 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
93 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
95 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
96 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
97 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
98 conforming to older POSIX versions.
100 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
103 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
109 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
114 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
116 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
118 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
119 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
120 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
122 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
123 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
124 problematic usages. These include:
126 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
127 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
128 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
129 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
130 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
131 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
132 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
133 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
134 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
136 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
137 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
139 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
140 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
141 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
142 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
144 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
145 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
146 between binary and text files.
148 The following programs now always use text input/output:
152 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
156 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
157 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
160 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
162 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
163 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
165 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
166 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
167 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
169 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
171 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
173 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
174 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
175 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
179 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
181 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
182 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
184 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
185 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
186 blocks until F contains N blocks.
190 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
191 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
195 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
196 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
197 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
201 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
202 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
206 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
208 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
210 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
214 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
215 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
216 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
218 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
219 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
220 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
221 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
222 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
224 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
228 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
229 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
230 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
232 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
234 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
235 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
236 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
237 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
239 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
241 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
242 rather than silently wrapping around.
244 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
245 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
247 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
248 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
250 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
251 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
252 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
255 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
257 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
259 ** Improved robustness
261 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
262 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
263 no matter how large the result.
265 ** Improved portability
267 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
268 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
270 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
272 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
273 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
274 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
276 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
277 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
281 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
282 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
284 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
286 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
287 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
288 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
289 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
291 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
292 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
294 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
295 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
296 categories if not specified by dircolors.
298 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
300 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
301 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
303 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
304 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
306 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
308 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
309 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
311 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
312 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
314 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
315 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
316 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
318 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
320 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
322 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
326 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
328 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
329 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
330 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
332 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
333 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
335 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
336 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
337 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
339 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
340 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
342 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
343 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
344 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
345 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
347 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
348 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
350 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
351 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
352 the file system does not support it.
354 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
356 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
357 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
359 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
361 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
362 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
364 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
365 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
366 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
367 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
369 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
370 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
373 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
374 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
375 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
376 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
378 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
379 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
380 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
381 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
383 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
384 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
386 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
388 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
389 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
390 reporting incorrect results.
394 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
395 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
397 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
400 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
402 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
403 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
405 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
406 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
408 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
411 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
412 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
413 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
414 the file name does not look like a page range.
416 printf has several changes:
418 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
419 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
421 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
422 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
423 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
425 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
426 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
429 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
430 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
432 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
433 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
435 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
436 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
438 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
440 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
442 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
443 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
444 when first encountering the directory.
448 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
449 output; POSIX requires this.
451 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
452 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
454 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
456 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
457 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
459 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
460 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
462 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
463 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
464 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
465 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
466 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
467 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
468 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
470 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
471 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
472 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
474 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
475 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
477 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
479 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
481 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
482 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
483 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
484 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
486 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
490 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
491 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
492 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
493 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
494 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
496 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
497 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
498 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
500 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
501 is longer than PATH_MAX.
503 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
504 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
506 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
507 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
508 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
509 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
510 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
512 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
513 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
515 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
516 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
518 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
520 nocreat do not create the output file
521 excl fail if the output file already exists
522 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
523 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
525 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
527 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
528 direct use direct I/O for data
529 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
530 sync likewise, but also for metadata
531 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
532 nofollow do not follow symlinks
533 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
535 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
537 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
538 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
541 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
542 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
543 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
544 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
545 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
546 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
548 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
549 list of NUL-terminated file names.
551 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
554 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
556 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
558 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
559 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
561 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
562 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
563 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
565 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
566 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
567 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
569 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
571 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
572 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
574 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
575 for compatibility with bash.
577 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
579 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
580 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
581 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
582 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
584 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
585 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
587 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
589 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
590 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
591 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
593 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
596 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
598 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
599 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
600 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
601 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
602 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
603 an offset, not as a file name.
605 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
606 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
608 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
609 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
611 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
612 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
614 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
615 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
616 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
618 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
619 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
623 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
625 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
627 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
631 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
632 or more arguments between partitions.
634 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
635 holes in the destination.
637 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
638 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
639 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
640 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
641 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
642 terminates immediately.
644 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
646 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
648 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
649 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
650 not the empty string.
652 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
653 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
657 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
658 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
659 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
662 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
669 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
673 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
674 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
676 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
677 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
679 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
680 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
681 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
684 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
688 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
689 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
691 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
692 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
694 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
695 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
696 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
698 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
700 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
703 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
705 ** Configuration option
707 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
708 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
712 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
713 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
717 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
718 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
719 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
722 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
723 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
724 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
725 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
726 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
727 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
728 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
731 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
735 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
736 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
737 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
739 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
740 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
742 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
744 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
745 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
746 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
747 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
749 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
751 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
752 not just the ones that reference directories
754 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
755 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
757 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
758 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
759 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
761 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
762 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
763 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
764 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
765 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
766 ragged when a datum was too wide.
768 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
773 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
774 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
776 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
778 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
780 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
782 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
783 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
785 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
786 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
788 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
790 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
794 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
796 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
798 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
799 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
800 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
801 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
802 resolution is the best we can do right now.
804 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
805 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
807 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
808 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
810 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
811 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
813 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
814 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
815 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
819 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
820 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
821 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
822 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
823 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
824 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
825 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
826 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
827 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
828 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
829 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
830 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
831 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
832 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
834 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
836 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
837 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
839 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
841 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
843 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
844 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
846 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
848 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
849 without a trailing newline.
851 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
852 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
854 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
857 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
861 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
863 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
865 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
866 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
867 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
868 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
870 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
872 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
873 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
874 be printed without leading spaces.
876 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
877 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
882 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
883 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
884 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
886 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
888 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
889 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
891 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
892 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
894 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
895 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
897 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
899 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
901 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
903 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
904 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
906 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
908 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
910 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
911 byte offsets are specified.
914 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
917 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
920 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
921 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
922 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
923 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
924 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
925 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
926 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
927 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
928 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
929 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
930 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
931 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
932 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
933 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
934 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
935 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
936 directory where M has write access.
937 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
938 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
939 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
942 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
943 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
944 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
945 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
946 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
947 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
948 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
949 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
950 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
951 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
952 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
953 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
954 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
955 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
956 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
957 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
958 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
959 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
960 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
961 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
962 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
963 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
964 appeared one additional time.
966 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
967 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
968 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
969 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
972 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
973 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
974 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
975 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
976 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
977 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
978 if there were more than 338.
980 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
981 - false --help now exits nonzero
984 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
985 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
986 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
987 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
990 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
991 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
992 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
993 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
994 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
997 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
998 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
999 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
1000 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
1001 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
1002 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
1003 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1006 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1007 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1008 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1009 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1010 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1011 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1013 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1014 under certain unusual conditions
1015 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1016 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1019 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1020 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1021 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1022 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1023 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1024 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1025 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1026 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1027 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1028 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1029 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1030 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1031 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1032 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1033 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1034 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1037 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1038 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1041 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1042 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1043 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1044 involving hard-linked directories
1045 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1046 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1047 character-special and block files
1050 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1051 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1052 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1053 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1054 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1055 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1056 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1057 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1058 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1060 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1061 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1062 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1063 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1064 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1065 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1066 specified on the command line.
1067 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1068 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1069 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1070 the first file untouched.
1071 * readlink: new program
1072 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1073 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1074 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1075 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1076 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1077 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1080 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1081 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1082 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1083 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1084 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1085 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1086 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1087 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1088 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1089 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1090 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1091 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1093 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1094 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1095 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1097 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1098 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1099 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1100 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1101 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1102 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1103 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1104 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1107 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1108 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1111 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1112 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1113 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1114 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1115 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1116 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1117 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1120 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1121 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1123 ========================================================================
1124 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1125 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1128 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1130 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1131 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1132 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1133 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1134 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1135 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1136 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1137 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1138 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1139 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1140 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1141 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1143 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1144 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1145 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1146 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1148 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1151 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1153 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1154 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1155 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1156 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1157 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1158 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1159 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1162 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1163 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1164 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1165 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1166 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1167 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1168 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1169 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1170 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1171 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1172 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1173 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1174 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1175 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1176 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1177 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1179 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1180 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1182 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1183 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1184 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1185 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1186 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1187 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1189 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1190 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1191 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1192 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1193 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1194 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1195 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1197 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1198 the source files in the following example:
1199 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1200 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1201 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1202 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1203 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1204 links between source files with --preserve=links
1205 * cp accepts new options:
1206 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1207 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1208 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1209 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1210 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1211 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1212 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1213 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1214 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1216 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1217 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1218 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1219 even though it's older than dest.
1220 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1221 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1222 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1223 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1224 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1226 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1227 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1228 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1229 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1230 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1231 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1232 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1234 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1235 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1236 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1238 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1239 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1240 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1241 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1242 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1243 This is the default.
1245 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1246 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1247 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1248 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1249 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1251 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1254 ========================================================================
1255 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1256 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1259 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1260 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1262 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1263 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1264 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1265 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1266 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1268 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1269 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1270 that specifies a non-directory
1273 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1274 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1275 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1276 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1277 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1278 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1279 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1280 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1281 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1282 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1283 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1284 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1285 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1286 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1287 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1288 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1289 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1290 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1291 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1292 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1293 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1294 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1295 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1296 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1298 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1299 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1300 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1302 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1304 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1305 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1307 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1308 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1309 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1310 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1311 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1313 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1314 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1315 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1316 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1317 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1319 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1321 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1322 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1323 * still more portability fixes
1324 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1325 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1327 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1329 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1331 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1333 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1334 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1335 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1336 there is any time remaining
1337 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1339 ========================================================================
1340 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1341 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1343 This package began as the union of the following:
1344 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.