1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
2 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-19):
6 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
7 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
8 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
10 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
11 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
13 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
15 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
16 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
17 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
18 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
20 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
22 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
23 not just the ones that reference directories
25 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
26 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
28 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
29 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
30 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
32 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
33 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
34 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
35 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
36 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
37 ragged when a datum was too wide.
39 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
44 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
45 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
47 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
49 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
51 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
53 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
54 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
56 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
57 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
59 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
61 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
65 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
67 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
69 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
70 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
71 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
72 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
73 resolution is the best we can do right now.
75 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
76 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
78 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
79 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
81 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
82 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
84 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
85 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
86 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
90 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
91 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
92 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
93 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
94 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
95 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
96 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
97 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
98 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
99 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
100 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
101 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
102 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
103 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
105 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
107 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
108 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
110 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
112 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
114 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
115 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
117 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
119 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
120 without a trailing newline.
122 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
123 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
125 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
128 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
132 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
134 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
136 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
137 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
138 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
139 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
141 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
143 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
144 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
145 be printed without leading spaces.
147 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
148 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
153 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
154 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
155 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
157 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
159 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
160 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
162 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
163 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
165 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
166 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
168 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
170 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
172 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
174 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
175 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
177 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
179 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
181 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
182 byte offsets are specified.
185 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
188 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
191 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
192 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
193 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
194 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
195 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
196 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
197 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
198 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
199 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
200 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
201 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
202 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
203 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
204 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
205 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
206 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
207 directory where M has write access.
208 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
209 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
210 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
213 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
214 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
215 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
216 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
217 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
218 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
219 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
220 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
221 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
222 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
223 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
224 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
225 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
226 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
227 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
228 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
229 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
230 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
231 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
232 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
233 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
234 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
235 appeared one additional time.
237 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
238 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
239 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
240 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
243 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
244 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
245 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
246 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
247 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
248 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
249 if there were more than 338.
251 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
252 - false --help now exits nonzero
255 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
256 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
257 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
258 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
261 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
262 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
263 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
264 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
265 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
268 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
269 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
270 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
271 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
272 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
273 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
274 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
277 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
278 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
279 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
280 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
281 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
282 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
284 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
285 under certain unusual conditions
286 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
287 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
290 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
291 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
292 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
293 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
294 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
295 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
296 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
297 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
298 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
299 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
300 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
301 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
302 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
303 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
304 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
305 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
308 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
309 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
312 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
313 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
314 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
315 involving hard-linked directories
316 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
317 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
318 character-special and block files
321 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
322 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
323 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
324 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
325 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
326 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
327 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
328 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
329 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
331 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
332 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
333 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
334 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
335 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
336 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
337 specified on the command line.
338 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
339 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
340 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
341 the first file untouched.
342 * readlink: new program
343 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
344 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
345 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
346 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
347 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
348 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
351 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
352 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
353 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
354 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
355 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
356 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
357 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
358 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
359 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
360 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
361 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
362 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
364 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
365 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
366 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
368 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
369 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
370 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
371 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
372 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
373 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
374 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
375 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
378 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
379 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
382 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
383 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
384 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
385 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
386 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
387 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
388 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
391 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
392 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
394 ========================================================================
395 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
396 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
399 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
401 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
402 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
403 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
404 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
405 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
406 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
407 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
408 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
409 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
410 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
411 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
412 The old options will continue to work for a while.
414 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
415 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
416 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
417 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
419 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
422 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
424 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
425 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
426 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
427 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
428 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
429 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
430 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
433 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
434 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
435 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
436 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
437 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
438 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
439 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
440 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
441 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
442 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
443 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
444 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
445 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
446 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
447 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
448 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
450 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
451 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
453 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
454 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
455 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
456 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
457 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
458 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
460 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
461 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
462 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
463 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
464 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
465 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
466 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
468 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
469 the source files in the following example:
470 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
471 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
472 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
473 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
474 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
475 links between source files with --preserve=links
476 * cp accepts new options:
477 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
478 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
479 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
480 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
481 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
482 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
483 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
484 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
485 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
487 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
488 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
489 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
490 even though it's older than dest.
491 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
492 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
493 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
494 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
495 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
497 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
498 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
499 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
500 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
501 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
502 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
503 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
505 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
506 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
507 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
509 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
510 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
511 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
512 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
513 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
516 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
517 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
518 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
519 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
520 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
522 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
525 ========================================================================
526 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
527 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
530 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
531 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
533 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
534 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
535 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
536 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
537 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
539 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
540 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
541 that specifies a non-directory
544 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
545 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
546 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
547 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
548 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
549 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
550 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
551 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
552 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
553 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
554 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
555 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
556 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
557 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
558 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
559 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
560 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
561 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
562 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
563 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
564 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
565 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
566 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
567 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
569 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
570 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
571 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
573 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
575 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
576 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
578 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
579 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
580 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
581 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
582 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
584 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
585 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
586 required support; from Bruno Haible.
587 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
588 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
590 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
592 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
593 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
594 * still more portability fixes
595 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
596 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
598 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
600 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
602 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
604 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
605 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
606 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
607 there is any time remaining
608 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
610 ========================================================================
611 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
612 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
614 This package began as the union of the following:
615 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.