1 GNU coreutils NEWS -*- outline -*-
2 * Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-10) [stable]
6 `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
7 holes in the destination.
9 nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
10 descriptor. This avoids some nohup-induced hangs. For example, before
11 this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
12 and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
13 10-minute sleep terminated. With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
14 terminates immediately.
16 `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:
18 Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.
20 The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
21 arguments are null or zero. E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
24 The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
25 `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.
29 `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
30 conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
31 containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.
34 * Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]
41 * Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0
45 `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
46 declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.
48 time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
49 when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.
51 seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
52 For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
53 on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP. Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
56 * Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):
60 rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
61 with status 0 when given more than one argument.
63 nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
64 as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.
66 Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
67 stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
68 formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.
70 factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.
72 paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)
75 * Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):
77 ** Configuration option
79 You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
80 e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209
84 fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
85 and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)
89 touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
90 operand, if both options are given. For example, "touch -r FOO -d
91 '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
94 join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
95 "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
96 Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
97 "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively. If join was compiled on a
98 POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
99 by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
102 * Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):
106 chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
107 unlimited depth. Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
108 encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.
110 chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
111 --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)
113 chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options
115 du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
116 Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
117 stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
118 a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.
120 du works even when run from an inaccessible directory
122 du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
123 not just the ones that reference directories
125 du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
126 of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp
128 du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
129 (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
130 Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.
132 When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
133 widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
134 columns that line up better. This may adversely affect shell
135 scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
136 not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
137 ragged when a datum was too wide.
139 du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
144 printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
145 and options in the C locale. POSIX requires this for printf.
147 od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults
149 csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)
151 csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases
153 ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
154 arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.
156 ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
157 (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.
159 dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)
161 * Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):
165 date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.
167 split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.
169 cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
170 file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
171 Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
172 timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
173 resolution is the best we can do right now.
175 sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
176 The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.
178 sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
179 Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.
181 `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
182 in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.
184 who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
185 who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
186 this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).
190 Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
191 the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
192 referenced by both `b' and `B'. Note that this would happen only on
193 file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
194 directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
195 Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
196 that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1). This mitigates the problem
197 in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
198 when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
199 *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
200 without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
201 1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
202 (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
203 2) B and b are hard links to the same file
205 stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'
207 fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
208 E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s
210 `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.
212 `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1. Now it doesn't.
214 seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
215 requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.
217 seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.
219 paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
220 without a trailing newline.
222 `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
223 to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.
225 tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning
228 * Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):
232 sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases
234 `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:
236 `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
237 with status 0. To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
238 `test -t 1'. To get help and version info for `test', use
239 `[ --help' and `[ --version'.
241 `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.
243 wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
244 size, if known. If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
245 be printed without leading spaces.
247 Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
248 but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
253 kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
254 Why wasn't this noticed? Although many tests use kill, none of
255 them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.
257 `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault
259 rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
260 unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.
262 uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
263 corresponding line, as required by POSIX.
265 expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
266 and with status 3 if an error occurred. POSIX requires this.
268 expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.
270 split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.
272 split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.
274 `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
275 when their output is redirected to /dev/full.
277 `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.
279 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
281 cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
282 byte offsets are specified.
285 * Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):
288 - new program: `[' (much like `test')
291 - head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
292 N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
293 - md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
294 MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
295 - date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
296 - chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
297 specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems. If chown *was not* compiled
298 on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default. If chown
299 was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
300 old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
301 - chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
302 on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
303 versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
304 pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
305 1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
306 chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
307 directory where M has write access.
308 2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
309 those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
310 a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.
313 - chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
314 - `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
315 - split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
316 - tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
317 delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing. That
318 bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
319 - du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
320 - df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
321 non-glibc, non-solaris systems
322 - `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
323 - readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
324 lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
325 - mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
326 This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
327 nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
328 - date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
329 - date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
330 conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
331 - fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
332 - fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
333 - tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
334 as required by POSIX. Before, it would act as if the final token
335 appeared one additional time.
337 ** Fewer arbitrary limitations
338 - tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
339 Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
340 - split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.
343 - `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
344 like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
345 - stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
346 - sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
347 - rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
348 Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
349 if there were more than 338.
351 * Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
352 - false --help now exits nonzero
355 * printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
356 * printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
357 * printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
358 * printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier
361 * seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
362 * seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
363 * seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
364 * df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
365 * portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP
368 * printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
369 * shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
370 * du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
371 * du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
372 via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
373 * portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
374 * du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
377 * du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
378 * work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
379 now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
380 truncates it. Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
381 * `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
382 hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
384 * rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
385 under certain unusual conditions
386 * mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
387 certain unusual conditions where they used to fail
390 * du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
391 * stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
392 * du accepts new option: --apparent-size
393 * du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
394 * du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
395 * df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
396 corresponding to the listed mount point. Before, for a block- or character-
397 special file command line argument, df would display that argument. E.g.,
398 `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
399 /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
400 * test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
401 context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
402 mechanisms. For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
403 `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
404 writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
405 prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.
408 * du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
409 contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)
412 * du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
413 * du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
414 * du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
415 involving hard-linked directories
416 * `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
417 * df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
418 character-special and block files
421 * ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
422 nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
423 * du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
424 * du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
425 even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
426 * du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
427 * rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
428 * ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
429 corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
431 * ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
432 Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
433 * ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
434 attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
435 * Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
436 longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
437 specified on the command line.
438 * shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
439 Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
440 and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
441 the first file untouched.
442 * readlink: new program
443 * cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
444 to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
445 output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
446 * rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
447 * when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
448 but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.
451 * cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
452 * `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
453 * ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
454 * stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
455 * `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
456 * `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
457 * In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
458 failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
459 * printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
460 * The following features have been added to the --block-size option
461 and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
462 - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
464 $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
465 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
466 - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
468 $ ls -l --block-size="K"
469 -rw-rw-r-- 1 eggert src 46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
470 * ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
471 just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si. Fractional
472 sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
473 * df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
474 block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
475 * nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'
478 * du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
479 * `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument
482 * `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
483 * `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
484 * `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
485 * rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
486 * printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
487 * od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
488 * tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option
491 * du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
492 * uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.
494 ========================================================================
495 Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
496 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
499 * `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
501 * rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
502 owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
503 * df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
504 * New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
505 * Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
506 use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
507 * The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
508 Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
509 * `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
510 * stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
511 * stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
512 The old options will continue to work for a while.
514 * rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
515 * new programs: link, unlink, and stat
516 * New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
517 * `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
519 * mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
522 * rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
524 * New cp option: --copy-contents.
525 * cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R. Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
526 traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
527 * ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
528 * The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
529 supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001. Use touch -t instead.
530 * cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
533 * cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
534 * The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
535 For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
536 whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
537 A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
538 A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
539 The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
540 * -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
541 * Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
542 * New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
543 * You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
544 e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
545 * The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
546 incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
547 df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
548 df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
550 * df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
551 * dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
553 * ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
554 This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
555 * dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
556 On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
557 resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
558 lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed. This may be a kernel bug.
560 * cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
561 now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
562 E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
563 cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
564 * chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
565 these: g=o, o=g, o=u. E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
566 of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
568 * mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
569 the source files in the following example:
570 rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
571 * ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX. It warns and doesn't infloop.
572 * cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
573 Use --parents to get the old meaning.
574 * When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
575 links between source files with --preserve=links
576 * cp accepts new options:
577 --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
578 --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
579 * cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
580 to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
581 * mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query}; provides a consistent
582 mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
583 destination files. Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
584 same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
585 * remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
587 * mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
588 when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
589 * mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
590 even though it's older than dest.
591 * chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
592 * cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
593 the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
594 * `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
595 * ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
597 * ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
598 symbolic links on the command-line only. It is the default unless
599 one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
600 * ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
601 * ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
602 * ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
603 * ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:
605 - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
606 `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
607 - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
609 - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
610 'touko 14 2001' and 'touko 14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
611 - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
612 time stamps like 'May 14 2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
613 specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
616 You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
617 or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'. GNU Emacs 21
618 and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
619 if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
620 locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".
622 * --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".
625 ========================================================================
626 Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
627 point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:
630 * date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
631 * fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
633 * nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
634 - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
635 - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
636 - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
637 127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
639 * uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
640 * pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
641 that specifies a non-directory
644 * who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
645 --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
646 The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
647 the long option `--users'. --idle is no longer the same as -u.
648 * The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
649 and are required by the new POSIX standard:
650 - `date -I' is no longer supported. Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
651 - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported. Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
652 * New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
653 'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
654 New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
655 Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
656 and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
657 the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
658 * 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
659 * 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
660 this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
661 * date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
662 (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
663 when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
664 opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
665 This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
666 It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
667 * factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
669 * setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
670 * `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
671 * some DOS/Windows portability changes
673 * `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
675 * fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
676 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
678 * all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
679 * printf exits nonzero upon write failure
680 * yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
681 * date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
682 * portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
684 * date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
685 * printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
686 required support; from Bruno Haible.
687 * stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
688 * seq's --equal-width option works more portably
690 * fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
692 * stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
693 systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
694 * still more portability fixes
695 * unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
696 is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
698 * fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
700 * fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
702 * Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
704 * sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
705 * sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
706 * when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
707 there is any time remaining
708 * who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup
710 ========================================================================
711 For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
712 packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.
714 This package began as the union of the following:
715 textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.