1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
3 * Major changes in release 5.91 (2005-??-??) [stable]
5 * Major changes in release 5.90 (2005-09-29) [unstable]
7 ** Bring back support for `head -NUM', `tail -NUM', etc. even when
8 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. The following changes apply only
9 when conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001; there is no effect when
10 conforming to older POSIX versions.
12 The following usages now behave just as when conforming to older POSIX:
15 expand -TAB1[,TAB2,...]
21 join -o FIELD_NAME1 FIELD_NAME2...
26 tail -[NUM][bcl][f] [FILE]
28 The following usages no longer work, due to the above changes:
30 date -I TIMESPEC (use `date -ITIMESPEC' instead)
31 od -w WIDTH (use `od -wWIDTH' instead)
32 pr -S STRING (use `pr -SSTRING' instead)
34 A few usages still have behavior that depends on which POSIX standard is
35 being conformed to, and portable applications should beware these
36 problematic usages. These include:
38 Problematic Standard-conforming replacement, depending on
39 usage whether you prefer the behavior of:
40 POSIX 1003.2-1992 POSIX 1003.1-2001
41 sort +4 sort -k 5 sort ./+4
42 tail +4 tail -n +4 tail ./+4
43 tail - f tail f [see (*) below]
44 tail -c 4 tail -c 10 ./4 tail -c4
45 touch 12312359 f touch -t 12312359 f touch ./12312359 f
46 uniq +4 uniq -s 4 uniq ./+4
48 (*) "tail - f" does not conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001; to read
49 standard input and then "f", use the command "tail -- - f".
51 These changes are in response to decisions taken in the January 2005
52 Austin Group standardization meeting. For more details, please see
53 "Utility Syntax Guidelines" in the Minutes of the January 2005
54 Meeting <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html>.
56 ** Binary input and output are now implemented more consistently.
57 These changes affect only platforms like MS-DOS that distinguish
58 between binary and text files.
60 The following programs now always use text input/output:
64 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy data:
68 The following programs now always use binary input/output to copy
69 data, except for stdin and stdout when it is a terminal.
72 (cat behaves similarly, unless one of the options -bensAE is used.)
74 cat's --binary or -B option has been removed. It existed only on
75 MS-DOS-like platforms, and didn't work as documented there.
77 md5sum and sha1sum now obey the -b or --binary option, even if
78 standard input is a terminal, and they no longer report files to be
79 binary if they actually read them in text mode.
81 ** Changes for better conformance to POSIX
83 cp, ln, mv, rm changes:
85 Leading white space is now significant in responses to yes-or-no questions.
86 For example, if "rm" asks "remove regular file `foo'?" and you respond
87 with " y" (i.e., space before "y"), it counts as "no".
91 On a QUIT or PIPE signal, dd now exits without printing statistics.
93 On hosts lacking the INFO signal, dd no longer treats the USR1
94 signal as if it were INFO when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.
96 If the file F is non-seekable and contains fewer than N blocks,
97 then before copying "dd seek=N of=F" now extends F with zeroed
98 blocks until F contains N blocks.
102 When POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, "fold file -3" is now equivalent to
103 "fold file ./-3", not the obviously-erroneous "fold file ./-w3".
107 -p now marks only directories; it is equivalent to the new option
108 --indicator-style=slash. Use --file-type or
109 --indicator-style=file-type to get -p's old behavior.
113 Documentation and diagnostics now refer to "nicenesses" (commonly
114 in the range -20...19) rather than "nice values" (commonly 0...39).
118 nohup now ignores the umask when creating nohup.out.
120 nohup now closes stderr if it is a terminal and stdout is closed.
122 nohup now exits with status 127 (not 1) when given an invalid option.
126 It now rejects the empty name in the normal case. That is,
127 "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
128 current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.
130 The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
131 as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
132 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
133 It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
134 <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.
136 The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.
140 chmod, mkdir, mkfifo, and mknod formerly mishandled rarely-used symbolic
141 permissions like =xX and =u, and did not properly diagnose some invalid
142 strings like g+gr, ug,+x, and +1. These bugs have been fixed.
144 csplit could produce corrupt output, given input lines longer than 8KB
146 dd now computes statistics using a realtime clock (if available)
147 rather than the time-of-day clock, to avoid glitches if the
148 time-of-day is changed while dd is running. Also, it avoids
149 using unsafe code in signal handlers; this fixes some core dumps.
151 expr and test now correctly compare integers of unlimited magnitude.
153 expr now detects integer overflow when converting strings to integers,
154 rather than silently wrapping around.
156 ls now refuses to generate time stamps containing more than 1000 bytes, to
157 foil potential denial-of-service attacks on hosts with very large stacks.
159 "mkdir -m =+x dir" no longer ignores the umask when evaluating "+x",
160 and similarly for mkfifo and mknod.
162 "mkdir -p /tmp/a/b dir" no longer attempts to create the `.'-relative
163 directory, dir (in /tmp/a), when, after creating /tmp/a/b, it is unable
164 to return to its initial working directory. Similarly for "install -D
167 "pr -D FORMAT" now accepts the same formats that "date +FORMAT" does.
169 stat now exits nonzero if a file operand does not exist
171 ** Improved robustness
173 Date no longer needs to allocate virtual memory to do its job,
174 so it can no longer fail due to an out-of-memory condition,
175 no matter how large the result.
177 ** Improved portability
179 hostid now prints exactly 8 hexadecimal digits, possibly with leading zeros,
180 and without any spurious leading "fff..." on 64-bit hosts.
182 nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.
184 `rm -r' can remove all entries in a directory even when it is on a
185 file system for which readdir is buggy and that was not checked by
186 coreutils' old configure-time run-test.
188 sleep no longer fails when resumed after being suspended on linux-2.6.8.1,
189 in spite of that kernel's buggy nanosleep implementation.
193 chmod -w now complains if its behavior differs from what chmod a-w
194 would do, and similarly for chmod -r, chmod -x, etc.
196 cp and mv: the --reply=X option is deprecated
198 date accepts the new option --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC. The old --iso-8602 (-I)
199 option is deprecated; it still works, but new applications should avoid it.
200 date, du, ls, and pr's time formats now support new %:z, %::z, %:::z
201 specifiers for numeric time zone offsets like -07:00, -07:00:00, and -07.
203 dd has new iflag= and oflag= flags "binary" and "text", which have an
204 effect only on nonstandard platforms that distinguish text from binary I/O.
206 du accepts new options: --time[=TYPE] and --time-style=STYLE
208 join now supports a NUL field separator, e.g., "join -t '\0'".
209 join now detects and reports incompatible options, e.g., "join -t x -t y",
211 ls no longer outputs an extra space between the mode and the link count
212 when none of the listed files has an ACL.
214 md5sum --check now accepts multiple input files, and similarly for sha1sum.
216 If stdin is a terminal, nohup now redirects it from /dev/null to
217 prevent the command from tying up an OpenSSH session after you logout.
219 "rm -FOO" now suggests "rm ./-FOO" if the file "-FOO" exists and
220 "-FOO" is not a valid option.
222 stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
223 stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
224 stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS
226 "touch -" now touches standard output, not a file named "-".
228 uname -a no longer generates the -p and -i outputs if they are unknown.
230 * Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]
234 Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:
236 Do not affect symbolic links by default.
237 Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
238 To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).
240 --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
241 and/or group match those of an affected symlink.
243 Check for incompatible options. When -R and --dereference are
244 both used, then either -H or -L must also be used. When -R and -h
245 are both used, then -P must be in effect.
247 -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
248 If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.
250 Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
251 and group already have the desired value. This optimization was
252 incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
253 special permission bits, as POSIX requires.
255 "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
256 without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.
258 Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
259 recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
260 the file system does not support it.
262 chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".
264 chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
265 used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.
267 cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.
269 dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
270 "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.
272 du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
273 directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
274 Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
275 chown, chmod, and chgrp.
277 du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
278 against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
281 echo now conforms to POSIX better. It supports the \0ooo syntax for
282 octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately. If
283 POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
284 outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.
286 expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better. They check for
287 blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
288 non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs. Unexpand now
289 preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.
291 "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
292 instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.
294 ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.
296 md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
297 lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
298 reporting incorrect results.
302 If it fails to lower the niceness due to lack of permissions,
303 it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.
305 It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current niceness
308 It no longer assumes that nicenesses range from -20 through 19.
310 It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nicenesses to the
311 closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.
313 pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
314 now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.
316 `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
319 pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
320 detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
321 pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
322 the file name does not look like a page range.
324 printf has several changes:
326 It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
327 can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.
329 On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
330 specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
331 (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).
333 The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
334 like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
337 ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
338 and --gap-size=N (-g) options.
340 mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
341 operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.
343 rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
344 to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.
346 rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.
348 rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.
350 "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
351 for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
352 when first encountering the directory.
356 "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
357 output; POSIX requires this.
359 An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
360 mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.
362 "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.
364 tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
365 /proc/modules. Before, it would produce no output for such a file.
367 tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
368 Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.
370 "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos. With no operands,
371 tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
372 When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
373 modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
374 more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
375 than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
376 and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.
378 tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
379 To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
380 Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".
382 "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
383 "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.
385 tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".
387 who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.
389 The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
390 accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
391 options may be added later. Formerly they accepted unknown options
392 as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".
394 basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes
398 For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
399 merely because the input happens to come from a pipe. As a result,
400 some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
401 are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
402 done reading it. This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.
404 When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
405 commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
406 the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".
408 pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
409 is longer than PATH_MAX.
411 cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
412 and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.
414 cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
415 destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
416 preexisting time stamp. This saves work in the common case when
417 copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
418 system with a coarse time stamp resolution.
420 cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
421 selected bytes, characters, or fields.
423 dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
424 transfer rate. The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.
426 dd has new conversions for the conv= option:
428 nocreat do not create the output file
429 excl fail if the output file already exists
430 fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
431 fsync likewise, but also write metadata
433 dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:
435 append append mode (makes sense for output file only)
436 direct use direct I/O for data
437 dsync use synchronized I/O for data
438 sync likewise, but also for metadata
439 nonblock use non-blocking I/O
440 nofollow do not follow symlinks
441 noctty do not assign controlling terminal from file
443 stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.
445 With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
446 If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
449 'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
450 BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
451 DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
452 Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
453 values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
454 This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.
456 du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
457 list of NUL-terminated file names.
459 Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
462 Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.
464 Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.
466 Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
467 prefixed by `@'. For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.
469 Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
470 and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC". For example,
471 "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".
473 Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
474 the environment only while that date is being processed. For example,
475 the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:
477 TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'
479 `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
480 nanosecond-resolution time stamps.
482 echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
483 for compatibility with bash.
485 ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.
487 ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
488 --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
489 This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
490 "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".
492 In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
493 so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:
495 false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
497 pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
498 printf supports \u, \U, \x.
499 tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.
501 The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
504 `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:
506 The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
507 even without --traditional. This is a change in behavior if there
508 are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
509 there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
510 For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
511 an offset, not as a file name.
513 -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
514 Use -x or -t x2 instead.
516 -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
517 -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).
519 -s is now equivalent to -t d2. The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
520 option has been renamed to "-S NUM".
522 The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
523 rather than two-byte int. This makes a difference only on hosts like
524 Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.
526 The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
527 consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.
531 md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.
533 tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.
535 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]
539 mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
540 or more arguments between partitions.
542 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
543 holes in the destination.
545 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
546 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
547 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
548 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
549 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
550 terminates immediately.
552 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
554 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
556 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
557 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
558 not the empty string.
560 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
561 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
565 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
566 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
567 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
570 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
577 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
581 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
582 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
584 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
585 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
587 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
588 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
589 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
592 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
596 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
597 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
599 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
600 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
602 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
603 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
604 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
606 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
608 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
611 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
613 ** Configuration option
615 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
616 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
620 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
621 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
625 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
626 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
627 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
630 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
631 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
632 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
633 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
634 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
635 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
636 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
639 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
643 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
644 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
645 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
647 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
648 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
650 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
652 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
653 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
654 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
655 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
657 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
659 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
660 not just the ones that reference directories
662 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
663 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
665 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
666 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
667 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
669 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
670 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
671 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
672 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
673 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
674 ragged when a datum was too wide.
676 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
681 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
682 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
684 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
686 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
688 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
690 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
691 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
693 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
694 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
696 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
698 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
702 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
704 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
706 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
707 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
708 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
709 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
710 resolution is the best we can do right now.
712 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
713 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
715 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
716 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
718 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
719 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
721 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
722 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
723 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
727 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
728 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
729 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
730 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
731 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
732 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
733 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
734 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
735 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
736 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
737 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
738 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
739 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
740 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
742 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
744 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
745 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
747 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
749 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
751 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
752 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
754 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
756 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
757 without a trailing newline.
759 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
760 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
762 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
765 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
769 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
771 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
773 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
774 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
775 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
776 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
778 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
780 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
781 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
782 be printed without leading spaces.
784 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
785 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
790 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
791 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
792 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
794 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
796 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
797 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
799 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
800 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
802 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
803 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
805 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
807 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
809 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
811 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
812 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
814 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
816 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
818 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
819 byte offsets are specified.
822 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
825 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
828 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
829 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
830 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
831 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
832 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
833 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
834 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
835 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
836 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
837 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
838 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
839 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
840 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
841 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
842 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
843 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
844 directory where M has write access.
845 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
846 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
847 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
850 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
851 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
852 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
853 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
854 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
855 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
856 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
857 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
858 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
859 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
860 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
861 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
862 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
863 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
864 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
865 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
866 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
867 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
868 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
869 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
870 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
871 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
872 appeared one additional time.
874 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
875 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
876 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
877 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
880 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
881 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
882 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
883 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
884 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
885 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
886 if there were more than 338.
888 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
889 - false --help now exits nonzero
892 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
893 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
894 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
895 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
898 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
899 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
900 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
901 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
902 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
905 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
906 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
907 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
908 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
909 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
910 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
911 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
914 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
915 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
916 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
917 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
918 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
919 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
921 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
922 under certain unusual conditions
923 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
924 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
927 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
928 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
929 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
930 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
931 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
932 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
933 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
934 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
935 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
936 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
937 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
938 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
939 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
940 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
941 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
942 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
945 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
946 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
949 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
950 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
951 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
952 involving hard-linked directories
953 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
954 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
955 character-special and block files
958 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
959 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
960 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
961 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
962 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
963 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
964 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
965 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
966 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
968 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
969 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
970 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
971 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
972 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
973 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
974 specified on the command line.
975 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
976 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
977 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
978 the first file untouched.
979 * readlink: new program
980 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
981 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
982 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
983 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
984 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
985 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
988 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
989 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
990 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
991 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
992 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
993 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
994 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
995 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
996 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
997 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
998 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
999 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
1001 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
1002 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
1003 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
1005 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
1006 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
1007 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
1008 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
1009 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
1010 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
1011 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
1012 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
1015 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
1016 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
1019 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
1020 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
1021 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
1022 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
1023 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
1024 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
1025 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
1028 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
1029 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
1031 ========================================================================
1032 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
1033 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1036 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
1038 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
1039 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
1040 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
1041 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
1042 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
1043 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
1044 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
1045 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
1046 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
1047 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
1048 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
1049 The old options will continue to work for a while.
1051 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
1052 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
1053 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
1054 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
1056 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
1059 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
1061 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
1062 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
1063 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
1064 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
1065 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
1066 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
1067 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
1070 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
1071 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
1072 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
1073 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
1074 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
1075 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
1076 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
1077 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
1078 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
1079 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
1080 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
1081 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
1082 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
1083 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
1084 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
1085 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
1087 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
1088 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
1090 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
1091 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
1092 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
1093 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
1094 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
1095 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
1097 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
1098 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
1099 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
1100 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
1101 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
1102 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
1103 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
1105 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
1106 the source files in the following example:
1107 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
1108 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
1109 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
1110 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
1111 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
1112 links between source files with --preserve=links
1113 * cp accepts new options:
1114 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
1115 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
1116 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
1117 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
1118 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
1119 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
1120 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
1121 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
1122 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
1124 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
1125 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
1126 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
1127 even though it's older than dest.
1128 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
1129 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
1130 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
1131 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
1132 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
1134 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
1135 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
1136 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
1137 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
1138 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
1139 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
1140 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
1142 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
1143 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
1144 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
1146 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
1147 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
1148 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
1149 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
1150 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
1151 This is the default.
1153 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
1154 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
1155 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
1156 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
1157 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
1159 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
1162 ========================================================================
1163 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
1164 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
1167 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
1168 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
1170 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1171 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
1172 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
1173 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
1174 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
1176 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
1177 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
1178 that specifies a non-directory
1181 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
1182 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
1183 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
1184 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
1185 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
1186 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
1187 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
1188 [This change was reverted in coreutils 5.3.1.]
1189 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
1190 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
1191 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
1192 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
1193 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
1194 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
1195 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
1196 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
1197 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
1198 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
1199 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
1200 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
1201 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
1202 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
1203 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
1204 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
1206 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
1207 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
1208 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
1210 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
1212 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
1213 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
1215 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
1216 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
1217 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
1218 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
1219 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
1221 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
1222 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
1223 required support; from Bruno Haible.
1224 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
1225 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
1227 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
1229 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
1230 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
1231 * still more portability fixes
1232 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
1233 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1235 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
1237 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
1239 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
1241 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
1242 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
1243 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
1244 there is any time remaining
1245 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
1247 ========================================================================
1248 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
1249 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
1251 This package began as the union of the following:
1252 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.