1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 6.0-cvs (????-??-??) [unstable]
5 ** Scheduled for removal
7 rm's --directory (-d) option is scheduled for removal in 2006. This
8 option has been silently ignored since coreutils 5.0. On systems
9 that support unlinking of directories, you can use the "unlink"
10 command to unlink a directory.
12 Similarly, we are considering the removal of ln's --directory (-d,
13 -F) option in 2006. Please write to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org> if this
14 would cause a problem for you. On systems that support hard links
15 to directories, you can use the "link" command to create one.
19 sha224sum: print or check a SHA224 (224-bit) checksum
20 sha256sum: print or check a SHA256 (256-bit) checksum
21 sha384sum: print or check a SHA384 (384-bit) checksum
22 sha512sum: print or check a SHA512 (512-bit) checksum
26 dircolors no longer segfaults upon an attempt to use the new
27 STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE (OWT) attribute.
29 du no longer overflows a counter when processing a file larger than
30 2^31-1 on some 32-bit systems (at least some AIX 5.1 configurations).
32 md5sum once again defaults to using the ` ' non-binary marker
33 (rather than the `*' binary marker) by default on Unix-like systems.
35 mkdir -p and install -d no longer exit nonzero when asked to create
36 a directory like `nonexistent/.'
38 rm emits a better diagnostic when (without -r) it fails to remove
39 a directory on e.g., Solaris 9/10 systems.
41 The documentation no longer mentions rm's --directory (-d) option.
43 tac now works when stdin is a tty, even on non-Linux systems.
45 "tail -c 2 FILE" and "touch 0101000000" now operate as POSIX
46 1003.1-2001 requires, even when coreutils is conforming to older
47 POSIX standards, as the newly-required behavior is upward-compatible
50 ** Build-related bug fixes
52 installing .mo files would fail
55 * Major changes in release 5.92 (2005-10-22) [stable]
59 chmod now diagnoses an invalid mode string starting with an octal digit
61 dircolors now properly quotes single-quote characters
63 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-10-17) [stable candidate]
67 "mkdir -p /a/b/c" no longer fails merely because a leading prefix
68 directory (e.g., /a or /a/b) exists on a read-only file system.
72 tail's --allow-missing option has been removed. Use --retry instead.
74 stat's --link and -l options have been removed.
75 Use --dereference (-L) instead.
79 Using ls, du, or df with the --kilobytes option now evokes a warning
80 that the long-named option is deprecated. Use `-k' instead.
82 du's long-named --megabytes option now evokes a warning.
86 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
88 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
89 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
90 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
91 conforming to older POSIX versions.
93 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
96 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
102 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
107 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
109 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
111 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
112 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
113 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
115 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
116 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
117 problematic usages. These include:
119 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
120 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
121 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
122 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
123 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
124 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
125 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
126 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
127 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
129 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
130 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
132 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
133 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
134 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
135 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
137 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
138 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
139 between binary and text files.
141 The following programs now always use text input/output:
145 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
149 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
150 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
153 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
155 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
156 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
158 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
159 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
160 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
162 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
164 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
166 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
167 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
168 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
172 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
174 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
175 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
177 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
178 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
179 blocks until F contains N blocks.
183 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
184 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
188 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
189 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
190 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
194 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
195 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
199 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
201 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
203 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
207 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
208 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
209 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
211 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
212 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
213 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
214 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
215 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
217 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
221 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
222 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
223 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
225 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
227 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
228 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
229 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
230 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
232 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
234 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
235 rather than silently wrapping around.
237 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
238 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
240 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
241 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
243 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
244 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
245 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
248 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
250 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
252 ** Improved robustness
254 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
255 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
256 no matter how large the result.
258 ** Improved portability
260 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
261 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
263 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
265 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
266 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
267 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
269 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
270 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
274 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
275 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
277 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
279 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
280 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
281 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
282 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
284 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
285 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
287 dircolors now supports SETUID, SETGID, STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE,
288 OTHER_WRITABLE, and STICKY, with ls providing default colors for these
289 categories if not specified by dircolors.
291 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
293 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
294 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
296 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
297 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
299 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
301 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
302 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
304 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
305 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
307 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
308 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
309 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
311 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
313 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
315 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
319 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
321 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
322 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
323 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
325 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
326 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
328 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
329 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
330 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
332 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
333 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
335 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
336 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
337 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
338 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
340 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
341 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
343 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
344 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
345 the file system does not support it.
347 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
349 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
350 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
352 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
354 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
355 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
357 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
358 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
359 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
360 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
362 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
363 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
366 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
367 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
368 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
369 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
371 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
372 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
373 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
374 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
376 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
377 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
379 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
381 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
382 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
383 reporting incorrect results.
387 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
388 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
390 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
393 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
395 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
396 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
398 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
399 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
401 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
404 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
405 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
406 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
407 the file name does not look like a page range.
409 printf has several changes:
411 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
412 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
414 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
415 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
416 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
418 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
419 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
422 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
423 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
425 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
426 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
428 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
429 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
431 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
433 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
435 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
436 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
437 when first encountering the directory.
441 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
442 output; POSIX requires this.
444 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
445 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
447 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
449 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
450 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
452 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
453 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
455 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
456 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
457 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
458 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
459 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
460 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
461 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
463 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
464 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
465 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
467 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
468 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
470 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
472 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
474 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
475 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
476 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
477 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
479 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
483 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
484 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
485 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
486 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
487 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
489 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
490 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
491 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
493 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
494 is longer than PATH_MAX.
496 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
497 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
499 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
500 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
501 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
502 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
503 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
505 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
506 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
508 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
509 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
511 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
513 nocreat do not create the output file
514 excl fail if the output file already exists
515 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
516 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
518 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
520 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
521 direct use direct I/O for data
522 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
523 sync likewise, but also for metadata
524 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
525 nofollow do not follow symlinks
526 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
528 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
530 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
531 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
534 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
535 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
536 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
537 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
538 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
539 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
541 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
542 list of NUL-terminated file names.
544 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
547 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
549 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
551 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
552 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
554 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
555 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
556 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
558 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
559 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
560 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
562 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
564 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
565 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
567 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
568 for compatibility with bash.
570 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
572 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
573 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
574 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
575 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
577 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
578 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
580 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
582 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
583 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
584 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
586 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
589 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
591 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
592 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
593 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
594 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
595 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
596 an offset, not as a file name.
598 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
599 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
601 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
602 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
604 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
605 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
607 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
608 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
609 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
611 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
612 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
616 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
618 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
620 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
624 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
625 or more arguments between partitions.
627 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
628 holes in the destination.
630 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
631 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
632 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
633 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
634 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
635 terminates immediately.
637 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
639 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
641 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
642 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
643 not the empty string.
645 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
646 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
650 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
651 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
652 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
655 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
662 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
666 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
667 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
669 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
670 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
672 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
673 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
674 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
677 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
681 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
682 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
684 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
685 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
687 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
688 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
689 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
691 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
693 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
696 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
698 ** Configuration option
700 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
701 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
705 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
706 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
710 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
711 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
712 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
715 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
716 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
717 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
718 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
719 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
720 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
721 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
724 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
728 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
729 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
730 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
732 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
733 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
735 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
737 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
738 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
739 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
740 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
742 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
744 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
745 not just the ones that reference directories
747 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
748 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
750 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
751 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
752 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
754 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
755 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
756 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
757 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
758 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
759 ragged when a datum was too wide.
761 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
766 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
767 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
769 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
771 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
773 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
775 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
776 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
778 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
779 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
781 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
783 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
787 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
789 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
791 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
792 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
793 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
794 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
795 resolution is the best we can do right now.
797 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
798 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
800 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
801 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
803 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
804 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
806 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
807 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
808 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
812 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
813 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
814 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
815 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
816 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
817 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
818 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
819 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
820 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
821 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
822 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
823 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
824 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
825 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
827 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
829 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
830 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
832 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
834 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
836 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
837 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
839 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
841 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
842 without a trailing newline.
844 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
845 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
847 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
850 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
854 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
856 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
858 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
859 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
860 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
861 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
863 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
865 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
866 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
867 be printed without leading spaces.
869 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
870 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
875 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
876 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
877 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
879 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
881 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
882 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
884 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
885 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
887 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
888 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
890 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
892 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
894 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
896 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
897 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
899 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
901 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
903 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
904 byte offsets are specified.
907 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
910 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
913 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
914 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
915 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
916 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
917 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
918 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
919 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
920 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
921 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
922 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
923 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
924 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
925 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
926 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
927 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
928 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
929 directory where M has write access.
930 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
931 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
932 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
935 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
936 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
937 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
938 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
939 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
940 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
941 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
942 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
943 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
944 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
945 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
946 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
947 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
948 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
949 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
950 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
951 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
952 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
953 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
954 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
955 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
956 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
957 appeared one additional time.
959 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
960 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
961 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
962 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
965 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
966 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
967 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
968 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
969 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
970 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
971 if there were more than 338.
973 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
974 - false --help now exits nonzero
977 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
978 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
979 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
980 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
983 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
984 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
985 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
986 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
987 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
990 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
991 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
992 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
993 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
994 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
995 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
996 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
999 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
1000 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
1001 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
1002 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
1003 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
1004 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
1006 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1007 under certain unusual conditions
1008 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
1009 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
1012 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
1013 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
1014 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
1015 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
1016 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
1017 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
1018 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
1019 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
1020 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
1021 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
1022 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
1023 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
1024 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
1025 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
1026 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
1027 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
1030 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
1031 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
1034 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
1035 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
1036 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
1037 involving hard-linked directories
1038 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
1039 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
1040 character-special and block files
1043 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
1044 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
1045 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
1046 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
1047 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
1048 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
1049 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
1050 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
1051 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
1053 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
1054 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
1055 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
1056 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
1057 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
1058 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
1059 specified on the command line.
1060 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
1061 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
1062 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
1063 the first file untouched.
1064 * readlink: new program
1065 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
1066 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
1067 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
1068 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
1069 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
1070 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
1073 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
1074 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
1075 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
1076 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
1077 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
1078 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
1079 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
1080 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
1081 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
1082 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
1083 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
1084 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1086 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1087 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1088 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1090 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1091 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1092 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1093 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1094 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1095 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1096 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1097 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1100 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1101 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1104 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1105 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1106 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1107 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1108 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1109 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1110 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1113 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1114 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1116 ========================================================================
1117 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1118 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1121 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1123 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1124 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1125 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1126 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1127 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1128 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1129 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1130 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1131 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1132 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1133 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1134 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1136 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1137 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1138 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1139 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1141 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1144 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1146 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1147 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1148 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1149 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1150 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1151 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1152 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1155 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1156 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1157 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1158 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1159 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1160 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1161 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1162 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1163 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1164 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1165 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1166 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1167 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1168 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1169 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1170 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1172 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1173 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1175 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1176 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1177 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1178 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1179 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1180 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1182 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1183 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1184 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1185 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1186 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1187 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1188 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1190 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1191 the source files in the following example:
1192 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1193 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1194 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1195 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1196 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1197 links between source files with --preserve=links
1198 * cp accepts new options:
1199 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1200 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1201 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1202 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1203 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1204 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1205 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1206 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1207 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1209 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1210 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1211 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1212 even though it's older than dest.
1213 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1214 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1215 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1216 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1217 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1219 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1220 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1221 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1222 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1223 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1224 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1225 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1227 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1228 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1229 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1231 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1232 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1233 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1234 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1235 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1236 This is the default.
1238 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1239 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1240 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1241 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1242 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1244 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1247 ========================================================================
1248 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1249 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1252 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1253 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1255 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1256 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1257 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1258 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1259 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1261 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1262 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1263 that specifies a non-directory
1266 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1267 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1268 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1269 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1270 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1271 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1272 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1273 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1274 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1275 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1276 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1277 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1278 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1279 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1280 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1281 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1282 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1283 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1284 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1285 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1286 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1287 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1288 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1289 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1291 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1292 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1293 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1295 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1297 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1298 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1300 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1301 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1302 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1303 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1304 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1306 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1307 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1308 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1309 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1310 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1312 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1314 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1315 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1316 * still more portability fixes
1317 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1318 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1320 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1322 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1324 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1326 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1327 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1328 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1329 there is any time remaining
1330 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1332 ========================================================================
1333 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1334 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1336 This package began as the union of the following:
1337 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.