1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
2 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
4 ** Configuration option
6 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
7 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
11 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
12 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
16 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
17 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
18 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
21 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
22 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
23 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
24 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
25 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
26 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
29 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
33 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
34 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
35 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
37 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
38 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
40 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
42 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
43 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
44 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
45 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
47 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
49 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
50 not just the ones that reference directories
52 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
53 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
55 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
56 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
57 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
59 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
60 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
61 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
62 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
63 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
64 ragged when a datum was too wide.
66 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
71 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
72 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
74 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
76 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
78 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
80 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
81 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
83 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
84 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
86 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
88 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
92 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
94 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
96 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
97 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
98 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
99 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
100 resolution is the best we can do right now.
102 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
103 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
105 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
106 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
108 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
109 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
111 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
112 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
113 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
117 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
118 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
119 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
120 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
121 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
122 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
123 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
124 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
125 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
126 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
127 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
128 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
129 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
130 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
132 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
134 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
135 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
137 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
139 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
141 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
142 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
144 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
146 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
147 without a trailing newline.
149 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
150 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
152 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
155 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
159 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
161 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
163 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
164 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
165 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
166 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
168 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
170 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
171 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
172 be printed without leading spaces.
174 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
175 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
180 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
181 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
182 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
184 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
186 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
187 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
189 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
190 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
192 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
193 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
195 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
197 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
199 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
201 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
202 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
204 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
206 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
208 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
209 byte offsets are specified.
212 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
215 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
218 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
219 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
220 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
221 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
222 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
223 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
224 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
225 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
226 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
227 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
228 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
229 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
230 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
231 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
232 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
233 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
234 directory where M has write access.
235 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
236 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
237 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
240 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
241 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
242 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
243 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
244 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
245 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
246 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
247 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
248 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
249 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
250 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
251 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
252 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
253 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
254 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
255 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
256 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
257 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
258 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
259 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
260 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
261 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
262 appeared one additional time.
264 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
265 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
266 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
267 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
270 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
271 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
272 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
273 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
274 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
275 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
276 if there were more than 338.
278 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
279 - false --help now exits nonzero
282 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
283 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
284 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
285 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
288 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
289 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
290 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
291 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
292 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
295 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
296 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
297 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
298 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
299 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
300 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
301 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
304 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
305 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
306 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
307 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
308 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
309 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
311 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
312 under certain unusual conditions
313 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
314 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
317 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
318 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
319 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
320 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
321 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
322 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
323 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
324 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
325 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
326 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
327 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
328 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
329 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
330 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
331 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
332 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
335 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
336 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
339 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
340 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
341 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
342 involving hard-linked directories
343 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
344 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
345 character-special and block files
348 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
349 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
350 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
351 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
352 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
353 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
354 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
355 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
356 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
358 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
359 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
360 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
361 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
362 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
363 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
364 specified on the command line.
365 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
366 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
367 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
368 the first file untouched.
369 * readlink: new program
370 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
371 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
372 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
373 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
374 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
375 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
378 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
379 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
380 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
381 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
382 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
383 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
384 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
385 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
386 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
387 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
388 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
389 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
391 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
392 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
393 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
395 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
396 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
397 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
398 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
399 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
400 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
401 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
402 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
405 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
406 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
409 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
410 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
411 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
412 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
413 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
414 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
415 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
418 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
419 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
421 ========================================================================
422 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
423 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
426 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
428 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
429 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
430 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
431 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
432 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
433 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
434 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
435 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
436 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
437 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
438 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
439 The old options will continue to work for a while.
441 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
442 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
443 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
444 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
446 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
449 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
451 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
452 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
453 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
454 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
455 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
456 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
457 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
460 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
461 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
462 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
463 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
464 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
465 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
466 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
467 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
468 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
469 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
470 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
471 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
472 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
473 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
474 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
475 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
477 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
478 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
480 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
481 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
482 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
483 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
484 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
485 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
487 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
488 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
489 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
490 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
491 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
492 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
493 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
495 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
496 the source files in the following example:
497 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
498 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
499 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
500 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
501 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
502 links between source files with --preserve=links
503 * cp accepts new options:
504 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
505 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
506 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
507 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
508 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
509 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
510 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
511 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
512 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
514 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
515 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
516 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
517 even though it's older than dest.
518 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
519 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
520 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
521 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
522 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
524 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
525 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
526 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
527 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
528 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
529 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
530 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
532 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
533 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
534 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
536 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
537 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
538 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
539 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
540 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
543 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
544 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
545 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
546 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
547 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
549 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
552 ========================================================================
553 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
554 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
557 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
558 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
560 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
561 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
562 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
563 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
564 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
566 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
567 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
568 that specifies a non-directory
571 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
572 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
573 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
574 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
575 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
576 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
577 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
578 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
579 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
580 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
581 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
582 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
583 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
584 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
585 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
586 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
587 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
588 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
589 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
590 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
591 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
592 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
593 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
594 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
596 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
597 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
598 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
600 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
602 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
603 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
605 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
606 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
607 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
608 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
609 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
611 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
612 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
613 required support; from Bruno Haible.
614 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
615 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
617 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
619 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
620 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
621 * still more portability fixes
622 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
623 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
625 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
627 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
629 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
631 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
632 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
633 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
634 there is any time remaining
635 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
637 ========================================================================
638 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
639 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
641 This package began as the union of the following:
642 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.