coreutils/NEWS

GNU coreutils NEWS                                    -*- outline -*-

* Major changes in release 5.3.1 (2005-??-??) [unstable]

** Changes for better compliance with POSIX

  pathchk changes:

    It now rejects the empty name in the normal case.  That is,
    "pathchk -p ''" now fails, and "pathchk ''" fails unless the
    current host (contra POSIX) allows empty file names.

    The new -P option checks whether a file name component has leading "-",
    as suggested in interpretation "Austin-039:XCU:pathchk:pathchk -p"
    <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6232>.
    It also rejects the empty name even if the current host accepts it; see
    <http://www.opengroup.org/austin/interps/doc.tpl?gdid=6233>.

    The --portability option is now equivalent to -p -P.

** Bug fixes

  expr now detects integer overflow when evaluating large integers,
  rather than silently wrapping around.

  test now detects integer overflow when evaluating large integers,
  rather than silently wrapping around.

** Improved portability

  nice now works on Darwin 7.7.0 in spite of its invalid definition of NZERO.

** New features

  stat -f -c %S outputs the fundamental block size (used for block counts).
  stat -f's default output format has been changed to output this size as well.
  stat -f recognizes file systems of type XFS and JFS

* Major changes in release 5.3.0 (2005-01-08) [unstable]

** Bug fixes

  Several fixes to chgrp and chown for compatibility with POSIX and BSD:

    Do not affect symbolic links by default.
    Now, operate on whatever a symbolic link points to, instead.
    To get the old behavior, use --no-dereference (-h).

    --dereference now works, even when the specified owner
    and/or group match those of an affected symlink.

    Check for incompatible options.  When -R and --dereference are
    both used, then either -H or -L must also be used.  When -R and -h
    are both used, then -P must be in effect.

    -H, -L, and -P have no effect unless -R is also specified.
    If -P and -R are both specified, -h is assumed.

    Do not optimize away the chown() system call when the file's owner
    and group already have the desired value.  This optimization was
    incorrect, as it failed to update the last-changed time and reset
    special permission bits, as POSIX requires.

    "chown : file", "chown '' file", and "chgrp '' file" now succeed
    without changing the uid or gid, instead of reporting an error.

    Do not report an error if the owner or group of a
    recursively-encountered symbolic link cannot be updated because
    the file system does not support it.

  chmod now accepts multiple mode-like options, e.g., "chmod -r -w f".

  chown is no longer subject to a race condition vulnerability, when
  used with --from=O:G and without the (-h) --no-dereference option.

  cut's --output-delimiter=D option works with abutting byte ranges.

  dircolors's documentation now recommends that shell scripts eval
  "`dircolors`" rather than `dircolors`, to avoid shell expansion pitfalls.

  du no longer segfaults when a subdirectory of an operand
  directory is removed while du is traversing that subdirectory.
  Since the bug was in the underlying fts.c module, it also affected
  chown, chmod, and chgrp.

  du's --exclude-from=FILE and --exclude=P options now compare patterns
  against the entire name of each file, rather than against just the
  final component.

  echo now conforms to POSIX better.  It supports the \0ooo syntax for
  octal escapes, and \c now terminates printing immediately.  If
  POSIXLY_CORRECT is set and the first argument is not "-n", echo now
  outputs all option-like arguments instead of treating them as options.

  expand and unexpand now conform to POSIX better.  They check for
  blanks (which can include characters other than space and tab in
  non-POSIX locales) instead of spaces and tabs.  Unexpand now
  preserves some blanks instead of converting them to tabs or spaces.

  "ln x d/" now reports an error if d/x is a directory and x a file,
  instead of incorrectly creating a link to d/x/x.

  ls no longer segfaults on systems for which SIZE_MAX != (size_t) -1.

  md5sum and sha1sum now report an error when given so many input
  lines that their line counter overflows, instead of silently
  reporting incorrect results.

  Fixes for "nice":

    If it fails to lower the nice value due to lack of permissions,
    it goes ahead and runs the command anyway, as POSIX requires.

    It no longer incorrectly reports an error if the current nice
    value happens to be -1.

    It no longer assumes that nice values range from -20 through 19.

    It now consistently adjusts out-of-range nice values to the
    closest values in range; formerly it sometimes reported an error.

  pathchk no longer accepts trailing options, e.g., "pathchk -p foo -b"
  now treats -b as a file name to check, not as an invalid option.

  `pr --columns=N' was not equivalent to `pr -N' when also using
  either -s or -w.

  pr now supports page numbers up to 2**64 on most hosts, and it
  detects page number overflow instead of silently wrapping around.
  pr now accepts file names that begin with "+" so long as the rest of
  the file name does not look like a page range.

  printf has several changes:

    It now uses 'intmax_t' (not 'long int') to format integers, so it
    can now format 64-bit integers on most modern hosts.

    On modern hosts it now supports the C99-inspired %a, %A, %F conversion
    specs, the "'" and "0" flags, and the ll, j, t, and z length modifiers
    (this is compatible with recent Bash versions).

    The printf command now rejects invalid conversion specifications
    like %#d, instead of relying on undefined behavior in the underlying
    printf function.

  ptx now diagnoses invalid values for its --width=N (-w)
  and --gap-size=N (-g) options.

  mv (when moving between partitions) no longer fails when
  operating on too many command-line-specified nonempty directories.

  rm (without -f) no longer hangs when attempting to remove a symlink
  to a file on an off-line NFS-mounted partition.

  rm no longer gets a failed assertion under some unusual conditions.

  rm no longer requires read access to the current directory.

  "rm -r" would mistakenly fail to remove files under a directory
  for some types of errors (e.g., read-only file system, I/O error)
  when first encountering the directory.

  "sort" fixes:

    "sort -o -" now writes to a file named "-" instead of to standard
    output; POSIX requires this.

    An unlikely race condition has been fixed where "sort" could have
    mistakenly removed a temporary file belonging to some other process.

    "sort" no longer has O(N**2) behavior when it creates many temporary files.

  tac can now handle regular, nonseekable files like Linux's
  /proc/modules.  Before, it would produce no output for such a file.

  tac would exit immediately upon I/O or temp-file creation failure.
  Now it continues on, processing any remaining command line arguments.

  "tail -f" no longer mishandles pipes and fifos.  With no operands,
  tail now ignores -f if standard input is a pipe, as POSIX requires.
  When conforming to POSIX 1003.2-1992, tail now supports the SUSv2 b
  modifier (e.g., "tail -10b file") and it handles some obscure cases
  more correctly, e.g., "tail +cl" now reads the file "+cl" rather
  than reporting an error, "tail -c file" no longer reports an error,
  and "tail - file" no longer reads standard input.

  tee now exits when it gets a SIGPIPE signal, as POSIX requires.
  To get tee's old behavior, use the shell command "(trap '' PIPE; tee)".
  Also, "tee -" now writes to standard output instead of to a file named "-".

  "touch -- MMDDhhmm[yy] file" is now equivalent to
  "touch MMDDhhmm[yy] file" even when conforming to pre-2001 POSIX.

  tr no longer mishandles a second operand with leading "-".

  who now prints user names in full instead of truncating them after 8 bytes.

  The following commands now reject unknown options instead of
  accepting them as operands, so that users are properly warned that
  options may be added later.  Formerly they accepted unknown options
  as operands; e.g., "basename -a a" acted like "basename -- -a a".

    basename dirname factor hostname link nohup sync unlink yes

** New features

  For efficiency, `sort -m' no longer copies input to a temporary file
  merely because the input happens to come from a pipe.  As a result,
  some relatively-contrived examples like `cat F | sort -m -o F - G'
  are no longer safe, as `sort' might start writing F before `cat' is
  done reading it.  This problem cannot occur unless `-m' is used.

  When outside the default POSIX locale, the 'who' and 'pinky'
  commands now output time stamps like "2004-06-21 13:09" instead of
  the traditional "Jun 21 13:09".

  pwd now works even when run from a working directory whose name
  is longer than PATH_MAX.

  cp, install, ln, and mv have a new --no-target-directory (-T) option,
  and -t is now a short name for their --target-directory option.

  cp -pu and mv -u (when copying) now don't bother to update the
  destination if the resulting time stamp would be no newer than the
  preexisting time stamp.  This saves work in the common case when
  copying or moving multiple times to the same destination in a file
  system with a coarse time stamp resolution.

  cut accepts a new option, --complement, to complement the set of
  selected bytes, characters, or fields.

  dd now also prints the number of bytes transferred, the time, and the
  transfer rate.  The new "status=noxfer" operand suppresses this change.

  dd has new conversions for the conv= option:

    nocreat   do not create the output file
    excl      fail if the output file already exists
    fdatasync physically write output file data before finishing
    fsync     likewise, but also write metadata

  dd has new iflag= and oflag= options with the following flags:

    append    append mode (makes sense for output file only)
    direct    use direct I/O for data
    dsync     use synchronized I/O for data
    sync      likewise, but also for metadata
    nonblock  use non-blocking I/O
    nofollow  do not follow symlinks
    noctty    do not assign controlling terminal from file

  stty now provides support (iutf8) for setting UTF-8 input mode.

  With stat, a specified format is no longer automatically newline terminated.
  If you want a newline at the end of your output, append `\n' to the format
  string.

  'df', 'du', and 'ls' now take the default block size from the
  BLOCKSIZE environment variable if the BLOCK_SIZE, DF_BLOCK_SIZE,
  DU_BLOCK_SIZE, and LS_BLOCK_SIZE environment variables are not set.
  Unlike the other variables, though, BLOCKSIZE does not affect
  values like 'ls -l' sizes that are normally displayed as bytes.
  This new behavior is for compatibility with BSD.

  du accepts a new option --files0-from=FILE, where FILE contains a
  list of NUL-terminated file names.

  Date syntax as used by date -d, date -f, and touch -d has been
  changed as follows:

    Dates like `January 32' with out-of-range components are now rejected.

    Dates can have fractional time stamps like 2004-02-27 14:19:13.489392193.

    Dates can be entered via integer counts of seconds since 1970 when
    prefixed by `@'.  For example, `@321' represents 1970-01-01 00:05:21 UTC.

    Time zone corrections can now separate hours and minutes with a colon,
    and can follow standard abbreviations like "UTC".  For example,
    "UTC +0530" and "+05:30" are supported, and are both equivalent to "+0530".

    Date values can now have leading TZ="..." assignments that override
    the environment only while that date is being processed.  For example,
    the following shell command converts from Paris to New York time:

      TZ="America/New_York" date --date='TZ="Europe/Paris" 2004-10-31 06:30'

  `date' has a new option --iso-8601=ns that outputs
  nanosecond-resolution time stamps.

  echo -e '\xHH' now outputs a byte whose hexadecimal value is HH,
  for compatibility with bash.

  ls now exits with status 1 on minor problems, 2 if serious trouble.

  ls has a new --hide=PATTERN option that behaves like
  --ignore=PATTERN, except that it is overridden by -a or -A.
  This can be useful for aliases, e.g., if lh is an alias for
  "ls --hide='*~'", then "lh -A" lists the file "README~".

  In the following cases POSIX allows the default GNU behavior,
  so when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set:

    false, printf, true, unlink, and yes all support --help and --option.
    ls supports TABSIZE.
    pr no longer depends on LC_TIME for the date format in non-POSIX locales.
    printf supports \u, \U, \x.
    tail supports two or more files when using the obsolete option syntax.

  The usual `--' operand is now supported by chroot, hostid, hostname,
  pwd, sync, and yes.

  `od' now conforms to POSIX better, and is more compatible with BSD:

    The older syntax "od [-abcdfilosx]... [FILE] [[+]OFFSET[.][b]]" now works
    even without --traditional.  This is a change in behavior if there
    are one or two operands and the last one begins with +, or if
    there are two operands and the latter one begins with a digit.
    For example, "od foo 10" and "od +10" now treat the last operand as
    an offset, not as a file name.

    -h is no longer documented, and may be withdrawn in future versions.
    Use -x or -t x2 instead.

    -i is now equivalent to -t dI (not -t d2), and
    -l is now equivalent to -t dL (not -t d4).

    -s is now equivalent to -t d2.  The old "-s[NUM]" or "-s NUM"
    option has been renamed to "-S NUM".

    The default output format is now -t oS, not -t o2, i.e., short int
    rather than two-byte int.  This makes a difference only on hosts like
    Cray systems where the C short int type requires more than two bytes.

  The stat option --filesystem has been renamed to --file-system, for
  consistency with POSIX "file system" and with cp and du --one-file-system.

** Removed features

  md5sum and sha1sum's undocumented --string option has been removed.

  tail's undocumented --max-consecutive-size-changes option has been removed.

* Major changes in release 5.2.1 (2004-03-12) [stable]

** Bug fixes

  mv could mistakenly fail to preserve hard links when moving two
  or more arguments between partitions.

  `cp --sparse=always F /dev/hdx' no longer tries to use lseek to create
  holes in the destination.

  nohup now sets the close-on-exec flag for its copy of the stderr file
  descriptor.  This avoids some nohup-induced hangs.  For example, before
  this change, if you ran `ssh localhost', then `nohup sleep 600 </dev/null &',
  and then exited that remote shell, the ssh session would hang until the
  10-minute sleep terminated.  With the fixed nohup, the ssh session
  terminates immediately.

  `expr' now conforms to POSIX better:

    Integers like -0 and 00 are now treated as zero.

    The `|' operator now returns 0, not its first argument, if both
    arguments are null or zero.  E.g., `expr "" \| ""' now returns 0,
    not the empty string.

    The `|' and `&' operators now use short-circuit evaluation, e.g.,
    `expr 1 \| 1 / 0' no longer reports a division by zero.

** New features

  `chown user.group file' now has its traditional meaning even when
  conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001, so long as no user has a name
  containing `.' that happens to equal `user.group'.


* Major changes in release 5.2.0 (2004-02-19) [stable]

** Bug fixes

  none


* Major changes in release 5.1.3 (2004-02-08): candidate to become stable 5.2.0

** Bug fixes

  `cp -d' now works as required even on systems like OSF V5.1 that
  declare stat and lstat as `static inline' functions.

  time stamps output by stat now include actual fractional seconds,
  when available -- or .0000000 for files without that information.

  seq no longer infloops when printing 2^31 or more numbers.
  For reference, seq `echo 2^31|bc` > /dev/null takes about one hour
  on a 1.6 GHz Athlon 2000 XP.  Now it can output 2^53-1 numbers before
  misbehaving.

* Major changes in release 5.1.2 (2004-01-25):

** Bug fixes

  rmdir -p exits with status 1 on error; formerly it sometimes exited
  with status 0 when given more than one argument.

  nohup now always exits with status 127 when it finds an error,
  as POSIX requires; formerly it sometimes exited with status 1.

  Several programs (including cut, date, dd, env, hostname, nl, pr,
  stty, and tr) now always exit with status 1 when they find an error;
  formerly they sometimes exited with status 2.

  factor no longer reports a usage error if stdin has the wrong format.

  paste no longer infloops on ppc systems (bug introduced in 5.1.1)


* Major changes in release 5.1.1 (2004-01-17):

** Configuration option

  You can select the default level of POSIX conformance at configure-time,
  e.g., by ./configure DEFAULT_POSIX2_VERSION=199209

** Bug fixes

  fold -s works once again on systems with differing sizes for int
  and size_t (bug introduced in 5.1.0)

** New features

  touch -r now specifies the origin for any relative times in the -d
  operand, if both options are given.  For example, "touch -r FOO -d
  '-5 seconds' BAR" sets BAR's modification time to be five seconds
  before FOO's.

  join: The obsolete options "-j1 FIELD", "-j2 FIELD", and
  "-o LIST1 LIST2..." are no longer supported on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.
  Portable scripts should use "-1 FIELD", "-2 FIELD", and
  "-o LIST1,LIST2..." respectively.  If join was compiled on a
  POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, you may enable the old behavior
  by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.


* Major changes in release 5.1.0 (2003-12-21):

** New features

  chgrp, chmod, and chown can now process (with -R) hierarchies of virtually
  unlimited depth.  Before, they would fail to operate on any file they
  encountered with a relative name of length PATH_MAX (often 4096) or longer.

  chgrp, chmod, chown, and rm accept the new options:
  --preserve-root, --no-preserve-root (default)

  chgrp and chown now accept POSIX-mandated -L, -H, and -P options

  du can now process hierarchies of virtually unlimited depth.
  Before, du was limited by the user's stack size and it would get a
  stack overflow error (often a segmentation fault) when applied to
  a hierarchy of depth around 30,000 or larger.

  du works even when run from an inaccessible directory

  du -D now dereferences all symlinks specified on the command line,
  not just the ones that reference directories

  du now accepts -P (--no-dereference), for compatibility with du
  of NetBSD and for consistency with e.g., chown and chgrp

  du's -H option will soon have the meaning required by POSIX
  (--dereference-args, aka -D) rather then the current meaning of --si.
  Now, using -H elicits a warning to that effect.

  When given -l and similar options, ls now adjusts the output column
  widths to fit the data, so that output lines are shorter and have
  columns that line up better.  This may adversely affect shell
  scripts that expect fixed-width columns, but such shell scripts were
  not portable anyway, even with old GNU ls where the columns became
  ragged when a datum was too wide.

  du accepts a new option, -0/--null, to make it produce NUL-terminated
  output lines

** Bug fixes

  printf, seq, tail, and sleep now parse floating-point operands
  and options in the C locale.  POSIX requires this for printf.

  od -c -w9999999 no longer segfaults

  csplit no longer reads from freed memory (dumping core on some systems)

  csplit would mistakenly exhaust virtual memory in some cases

  ls --width=N (for very large N) is no longer subject to an address
  arithmetic bug that could result in bounds violations.

  ls --width=N (with -x or -C) no longer allocates more space
  (potentially much more) than necessary for a given directory.

  dd `unblock' and `sync' may now be combined (e.g., dd conv=unblock,sync)

* Major changes in release 5.0.91 (2003-09-08):

** New features

  date accepts a new option --rfc-2822, an alias for --rfc-822.

  split accepts a new option -d or --numeric-suffixes.

  cp, install, mv, and touch now preserve microsecond resolution on
  file timestamps, on platforms that have the 'utimes' system call.
  Unfortunately there is no system call yet to preserve file
  timestamps to their full nanosecond resolution; microsecond
  resolution is the best we can do right now.

  sort now supports the zero byte (NUL) as a field separator; use -t '\0'.
  The -t '' option, which formerly had no effect, is now an error.

  sort option order no longer matters for the options -S, -d, -i, -o, and -t.
  Stronger options override weaker, and incompatible options are diagnosed.

  `sha1sum --check' now accepts the BSD format for SHA1 message digests
  in addition to the BSD format for MD5 ones.

  who -l now means `who --login', not `who --lookup', per POSIX.
  who's -l option has been eliciting an unconditional warning about
  this impending change since sh-utils-2.0.12 (April 2002).

** Bug fixes

  Mistakenly renaming a file onto itself, e.g., via `mv B b' when `B' is
  the same directory entry as `b' no longer destroys the directory entry
  referenced by both `b' and `B'.  Note that this would happen only on
  file systems like VFAT where two different names may refer to the same
  directory entry, usually due to lower->upper case mapping of file names.
  Now, the above can happen only on file systems that perform name mapping and
  that support hard links (stat.st_nlink > 1).  This mitigates the problem
  in two ways: few file systems appear to be affected (hpfs and ntfs are),
  when the bug is triggered, mv no longer removes the last hard link to a file.
  *** ATTENTION ***: if you know how to distinguish the following two cases
  without writing to the file system in question, please let me know:
  1) B and b refer to the same directory entry on a file system like NTFS
       (B may well have a link count larger than 1)
  2) B and b are hard links to the same file

  stat no longer overruns a buffer for format strings ending in `%'

  fold -s -wN would infloop for N < 8 with TABs in the input.
  E.g., this would not terminate: printf 'a\t' | fold -w2 -s

  `split -a0', although of questionable utility, is accepted once again.

  `df DIR' used to hang under some conditions on OSF/1 5.1.  Now it doesn't.

  seq's --width (-w) option now works properly even when the endpoint
  requiring the larger width is negative and smaller than the other endpoint.

  seq's default step is 1, even if LAST < FIRST.

  paste no longer mistakenly outputs 0xFF bytes for a nonempty input file
  without a trailing newline.

  `tail -n0 -f FILE' and `tail -c0 -f FILE' no longer perform what amounted
  to a busy wait, rather than sleeping between iterations.

  tail's long-undocumented --allow-missing option now elicits a warning


* Major changes in release 5.0.90 (2003-07-29):

** New features

  sort is now up to 30% more CPU-efficient in some cases

  `test' is now more compatible with Bash and POSIX:

    `test -t', `test --help', and `test --version' now silently exit
    with status 0.  To test whether standard output is a terminal, use
    `test -t 1'.  To get help and version info for `test', use
    `[ --help' and `[ --version'.

    `test' now exits with status 2 (not 1) if there is an error.

  wc count field widths now are heuristically adjusted depending on the input
  size, if known.  If only one count is printed, it is guaranteed to
  be printed without leading spaces.

  Previously, wc did not align the count fields if POSIXLY_CORRECT was set,
  but POSIX did not actually require this undesirable behavior, so it
  has been removed.

** Bug fixes

  kill no longer tries to operate on argv[0] (introduced in 5.0.1)
  Why wasn't this noticed?  Although many tests use kill, none of
  them made an effort to avoid using the shell's built-in kill.

  `[' invoked with no arguments no longer evokes a segfault

  rm without --recursive (aka -r or -R) no longer prompts regarding
  unwritable directories, as required by POSIX.

  uniq -c now uses a SPACE, not a TAB between the count and the
  corresponding line, as required by POSIX.

  expr now exits with status 2 if the expression is syntactically valid,
  and with status 3 if an error occurred.  POSIX requires this.

  expr now reports trouble if string comparison fails due to a collation error.

  split now generates suffixes properly on EBCDIC hosts.

  split -a0 now works, as POSIX requires.

  `sort --version' and `sort --help' fail, as they should
  when their output is redirected to /dev/full.

  `su --version > /dev/full' now fails, as it should.

** Fewer arbitrary limitations

  cut requires 97% less memory when very large field numbers or
  byte offsets are specified.


* Major changes in release 5.0.1 (2003-07-15):

** New programs
- new program: `[' (much like `test')

** New features
- head now accepts --lines=-N (--bytes=-N) to print all but the
  N lines (bytes) at the end of the file
- md5sum --check now accepts the output of the BSD md5sum program, e.g.,
  MD5 (f) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
- date -d DATE can now parse a DATE string like May-23-2003
- chown: `.' is no longer recognized as a separator in the OWNER:GROUP
  specifier on POSIX 1003.1-2001 systems.  If chown *was not* compiled
  on such a system, then it still accepts `.', by default.  If chown
  was compiled on a POSIX 1003.1-2001 system, then you may enable the
  old behavior by setting _POSIX2_VERSION=199209 in your environment.
- chown no longer tries to preserve set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits;
  on some systems, the chown syscall resets those bits, and previous
  versions of the chown command would call chmod to restore the original,
  pre-chown(2) settings, but that behavior is problematic.
  1) There was a window whereby a malicious user, M, could subvert a
  chown command run by some other user and operating on files in a
  directory where M has write access.
  2) Before (and even now, on systems with chown(2) that doesn't reset
  those bits), an unwary admin. could use chown unwittingly to create e.g.,
  a set-user-ID root copy of /bin/sh.

** Bug fixes
- chown --dereference no longer leaks a file descriptor per symlink processed
- `du /' once again prints the `/' on the last line
- split's --verbose option works once again [broken in 4.5.10 and 5.0]
- tail -f is no longer subject to a race condition that could make it
  delay displaying the last part of a file that had stopped growing.  That
  bug could also make tail -f give an unwarranted `file truncated' warning.
- du no longer runs out of file descriptors unnecessarily
- df and `readlink --canonicalize' no longer corrupt the heap on
  non-glibc, non-solaris systems
- `env -u UNSET_VARIABLE' no longer dumps core on non-glibc systems
- readlink's --canonicalize option now works on systems like Solaris that
  lack the canonicalize_file_name function but do have resolvepath.
- mv now removes `a' in this example on all systems: touch a; ln a b; mv a b
  This behavior is contrary to POSIX (which requires that the mv command do
  nothing and exit successfully), but I suspect POSIX will change.
- date's %r format directive now honors locale settings
- date's `-' (no-pad) format flag now affects the space-padded-by-default
  conversion specifiers, %e, %k, %l
- fmt now diagnoses invalid obsolescent width specifications like `-72x'
- fmt now exits nonzero when unable to open an input file
- tsort now fails when given an odd number of input tokens,
  as required by POSIX.  Before, it would act as if the final token
  appeared one additional time.

** Fewer arbitrary limitations
- tail's byte and line counts are no longer limited to OFF_T_MAX.
  Now the limit is UINTMAX_MAX (usually 2^64).
- split can now handle --bytes=N and --lines=N with N=2^31 or more.

** Portability
- `kill -t' now prints signal descriptions (rather than `?') on systems
  like Tru64 with __sys_siglist but no strsignal function.
- stat.c now compiles on Ultrix systems
- sleep now works on AIX systems that lack support for clock_gettime
- rm now works around Darwin6.5's broken readdir function
  Before `rm -rf DIR' would fail to remove all files in DIR
  if there were more than 338.

* Major changes in release 5.0 (2003-04-02):
- false --help now exits nonzero

[4.5.12]
* printf no longer treats \x specially when POSIXLY_CORRECT is set
* printf avoids buffer overrun with format ending in a backslash and
* printf avoids buffer overrun with incomplete conversion specifier
* printf accepts multiple flags in a single conversion specifier

[4.5.11]
* seq no longer requires that a field width be specified
* seq no longer fails when given a field width of `0'
* seq now accepts ` ' and `'' as valid format flag characters
* df now shows a HOSTNAME: prefix for each remote-mounted file system on AIX 5.1
* portability tweaks for HP-UX, AIX 5.1, DJGPP

[4.5.10]
* printf no longer segfaults for a negative field width or precision
* shred now always enables --exact for non-regular files
* du no longer lists hard-linked files more than once
* du no longer dumps core on some systems due to `infinite' recursion
  via nftw's use of the buggy replacement function in getcwd.c
* portability patches for a few vendor compilers and 64-bit systems
* du -S *really* now works like it did before the change in 4.5.5

[4.5.9]
* du no longer truncates file sizes or sums to fit in 32-bit size_t
* work around Linux kernel bug in getcwd (fixed in 2.4.21-pre4), so that pwd
  now fails if the name of the working directory is so long that getcwd
  truncates it.  Before it would print the truncated name and exit successfully.
* `df /some/mount-point' no longer hangs on a GNU libc system when another
  hard-mounted NFS file system (preceding /some/mount-point in /proc/mounts)
  is inaccessible.
* rm -rf now gives an accurate diagnostic when failing to remove a file
  under certain unusual conditions
* mv and `cp --preserve=links' now preserve multiple hard links even under
  certain unusual conditions where they used to fail

[4.5.8]
* du -S once again works like it did before the change in 4.5.5
* stat accepts a new file format, %B, for the size of each block reported by %b
* du accepts new option: --apparent-size
* du --bytes (-b) works the same way it did in fileutils-3.16 and before
* du reports proper sizes for directories (not zero) (broken in 4.5.6 or 4.5.7)
* df now always displays under `Filesystem', the device file name
  corresponding to the listed mount point.  Before, for a block- or character-
  special file command line argument, df would display that argument.  E.g.,
  `df /dev/hda' would list `/dev/hda' as the `Filesystem', rather than say
  /dev/hda3 (the device on which `/' is mounted), as it does now.
* test now works properly when invoked from a set user ID or set group ID
  context and when testing access to files subject to alternate protection
  mechanisms.  For example, without this change, a set-UID program that invoked
  `test -w F' (to see if F is writable) could mistakenly report that it *was*
  writable, even though F was on a read-only file system, or F had an ACL
  prohibiting write access, or F was marked as immutable.

[4.5.7]
* du would fail with more than one DIR argument when any but the last did not
  contain a slash (due to a bug in ftw.c)

[4.5.6]
* du no longer segfaults on Solaris systems (fixed heap-corrupting bug in ftw.c)
* du --exclude=FILE works once again (this was broken by the rewrite for 4.5.5)
* du no longer gets a failed assertion for certain hierarchy lay-outs
  involving hard-linked directories
* `who -r' no longer segfaults when using non-C-locale messages
* df now displays a mount point (usually `/') for non-mounted
  character-special and block files

[4.5.5]
* ls --dired produces correct byte offset for file names containing
  nonprintable characters in a multibyte locale
* du has been rewritten to use a variant of GNU libc's ftw.c
* du now counts the space associated with a directory's directory entry,
  even if it cannot list or chdir into that subdirectory.
* du -S now includes the st_size of each entry corresponding to a subdirectory
* rm on FreeBSD can once again remove directories from NFS-mounted file systems
* ls has a new option --dereference-command-line-symlink-to-dir, which
  corresponds to the new default behavior when none of -d, -l -F, -H, -L
  has been specified.
* ls dangling-symlink now prints `dangling-symlink'.
  Before, it would fail with `no such file or directory'.
* ls -s symlink-to-non-dir and ls -i symlink-to-non-dir now print
  attributes of `symlink', rather than attributes of their referents.
* Fix a bug introduced in 4.5.4 that made it so that ls --color would no
  longer highlight the names of files with the execute bit set when not
  specified on the command line.
* shred's --zero (-z) option no longer gobbles up any following argument.
  Before, `shred --zero file' would produce `shred: missing file argument',
  and worse, `shred --zero f1 f2 ...' would appear to work, but would leave
  the first file untouched.
* readlink: new program
* cut: new feature: when used to select ranges of byte offsets (as opposed
  to ranges of fields) and when --output-delimiter=STRING is specified,
  output STRING between ranges of selected bytes.
* rm -r can no longer be tricked into mistakenly reporting a cycle.
* when rm detects a directory cycle, it no longer aborts the entire command,
  but rather merely stops processing the affected command line argument.

[4.5.4]
* cp no longer fails to parse options like this: --preserve=mode,ownership
* `ls --color -F symlink-to-dir' works properly
* ls is much more efficient on directories with valid dirent.d_type.
* stty supports all baud rates defined in linux-2.4.19.
* `du symlink-to-dir/' would improperly remove the trailing slash
* `du ""' would evoke a bounds violation.
* In the unlikely event that running `du /' resulted in `stat ("/", ...)'
  failing, du would give a diagnostic about `' (empty string) rather than `/'.
* printf: a hexadecimal escape sequence has at most two hex. digits, not three.
* The following features have been added to the --block-size option
  and similar environment variables of df, du, and ls.
  - A leading "'" generates numbers with thousands separators.
    For example:
      $ ls -l --block-size="'1" file
      -rw-rw-r--    1 eggert   src      47,483,707 Sep 24 23:40 file
  - A size suffix without a leading integer generates a suffix in the output.
    For example:
      $ ls -l --block-size="K"
      -rw-rw-r--    1 eggert   src          46371K Sep 24 23:40 file
* ls's --block-size option now affects file sizes in all cases, not
  just for --block-size=human-readable and --block-size=si.  Fractional
  sizes are now always rounded up, for consistency with df and du.
* df now displays the block size using powers of 1000 if the requested
  block size seems to be a multiple of a power of 1000.
* nl no longer gets a segfault when run like this `yes|nl -s%n'

[4.5.3]
* du --dereference-args (-D) no longer fails in certain cases
* `ln --target-dir=DIR' no longer fails when given a single argument

[4.5.2]
* `rm -i dir' (without --recursive (-r)) no longer recurses into dir
* `tail -c N FILE' now works with files of size >= 4GB
* `mkdir -p' can now create very deep (e.g. 40,000-component) directories
* rmdir -p dir-with-trailing-slash/ no longer fails
* printf now honors the `--' command line delimiter
* od's 8-byte formats x8, o8, and u8 now work
* tail now accepts fractional seconds for its --sleep-interval=S (-s) option

[4.5.1]
* du and ls now report sizes of symbolic links (before they'd always report 0)
* uniq now obeys the LC_COLLATE locale, as per POSIX 1003.1-2001 TC1.

========================================================================
Here are the NEWS entries made from fileutils-4.1 until the
point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:

[4.1.11]
* `rm symlink-to-unwritable' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.10]
[4.1.10]
* rm once again gives a reasonable diagnostic when failing to remove a file
    owned by someone else in a sticky directory [introduced in 4.1.9]
* df now rounds all quantities up, as per POSIX.
* New ls time style: long-iso, which generates YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM.
* Any time style can be preceded by "posix-"; this causes "ls" to
  use traditional timestamp format when in the POSIX locale.
* The default time style is now posix-long-iso instead of posix-iso.
  Set TIME_STYLE="posix-iso" to revert to the behavior of 4.1.1 thru 4.1.9.
* `rm dangling-symlink' doesn't prompt [introduced in 4.1.9]
* stat: remove support for --secure/-s option and related %S and %C format specs
* stat: rename --link/-l to --dereference/-L.
    The old options will continue to work for a while.
[4.1.9]
* rm can now remove very deep hierarchies, in spite of any limit on stack size
* new programs: link, unlink, and stat
* New ls option: --author (for the Hurd).
* `touch -c no-such-file' no longer fails, per POSIX
[4.1.8]
* mv no longer mistakenly creates links to preexisting destination files
    that aren't moved
[4.1.7]
* rm: close a hole that would allow a running rm process to be subverted
[4.1.6]
* New cp option: --copy-contents.
* cp -r is now equivalent to cp -R.  Use cp -R -L --copy-contents to get the
  traditional (and rarely desirable) cp -r behavior.
* ls now accepts --time-style=+FORMAT, where +FORMAT works like date's format
* The obsolete usage `touch [-acm] MMDDhhmm[YY] FILE...' is no longer
  supported on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001.  Use touch -t instead.
* cp and inter-partition mv no longer give a misleading diagnostic in some
    unusual cases
[4.1.5]
* cp -r no longer preserves symlinks
* The block size notation is now compatible with SI and with IEC 60027-2.
  For example, --block-size=1MB now means --block-size=1000000,
  whereas --block-size=1MiB now means --block-size=1048576.
  A missing `B' (e.g. `1M') has the same meaning as before.
  A trailing `B' now means decimal, not binary; this is a silent change.
  The nonstandard `D' suffix (e.g. `1MD') is now obsolescent.
* -H or --si now outputs the trailing 'B', for consistency with the above.
* Programs now output trailing 'K' (not 'k') to mean 1024, as per IEC 60027-2.
* New df, du short option -B is short for --block-size.
* You can omit an integer `1' before a block size suffix,
  e.g. `df -BG' is equivalent to `df -B 1G' and to `df --block-size=1G'.
* The following options are now obsolescent, as their names are
  incompatible with IEC 60027-2:
   df, du: -m or --megabytes (use -BM or --block-size=1M)
   df, du, ls: --kilobytes (use --block-size=1K)
[4.1.4]
* df --local no longer lists smbfs file systems whose name starts with //
* dd now detects the Linux/tape/lseek bug at run time and warns about it.
[4.1.3]
* ls -R once again outputs a blank line between per-directory groups of files.
    This was broken by the cycle-detection change in 4.1.1.
* dd once again uses `lseek' on character devices like /dev/mem and /dev/kmem.
    On systems with the linux kernel (at least up to 2.4.16), dd must still
    resort to emulating `skip=N' behavior using reads on tape devices, because
    lseek has no effect, yet appears to succeed.  This may be a kernel bug.
[4.1.2]
* cp no longer fails when two or more source files are the same;
    now it just gives a warning and doesn't copy the file the second time.
    E.g., cp a a d/ produces this:
    cp: warning: source file `a' specified more than once
* chmod would set the wrong bit when given symbolic mode strings like
    these: g=o, o=g, o=u.  E.g., `chmod a=,o=w,ug=o f' would give a mode
    of --w-r---w- rather than --w--w--w-.
[4.1.1]
* mv (likewise for cp), now fails rather than silently clobbering one of
    the source files in the following example:
    rm -rf a b c; mkdir a b c; touch a/f b/f; mv a/f b/f c
* ls -R detects directory cycles, per POSIX.  It warns and doesn't infloop.
* cp's -P option now means the same as --no-dereference, per POSIX.
    Use --parents to get the old meaning.
* When copying with the -H and -L options, cp can preserve logical
    links between source files with --preserve=links
* cp accepts new options:
    --preserve[={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}]
    --no-preserve={mode,ownership,timestamps,links,all}
* cp's -p and --preserve options remain unchanged and are equivalent
    to `--preserve=mode,ownership,timestamps'
* mv and cp accept a new option: --reply={yes,no,query};  provides a consistent
    mechanism to control whether one is prompted about certain existing
    destination files.  Note that cp's and mv's -f options don't have the
    same meaning: cp's -f option no longer merely turns off `-i'.
* remove portability limitations (e.g., PATH_MAX on the Hurd, fixes for
    64-bit systems)
* mv now prompts before overwriting an existing, unwritable destination file
    when stdin is a tty, unless --force (-f) is specified, as per POSIX.
* mv: fix the bug whereby `mv -uf source dest' would delete source,
    even though it's older than dest.
* chown's --from=CURRENT_OWNER:CURRENT_GROUP option now works
* cp now ensures that the set-user-ID and set-group-ID bits are cleared for
    the destination file when when copying and not preserving permissions.
* `ln -f --backup k k' gives a clearer diagnostic
* ls no longer truncates user names or group names that are longer
    than 8 characters.
* ls's new --dereference-command-line option causes it to dereference
  symbolic links on the command-line only.  It is the default unless
  one of the -d, -F, or -l options are given.
* ls -H now means the same as ls --dereference-command-line, as per POSIX.
* ls -g now acts like ls -l, except it does not display owner, as per POSIX.
* ls -n now implies -l, as per POSIX.
* ls can now display dates and times in one of four time styles:

  - The `full-iso' time style gives full ISO-style time stamps like
    `2001-05-14 23:45:56.477817180 -0700'.
  - The 'iso' time style gives ISO-style time stamps like '2001-05-14 '
    and '05-14 23:45'.
  - The 'locale' time style gives locale-dependent time stamps like
    'touko  14  2001' and 'touko  14 23:45' (in a Finnish locale).
  - The 'posix-iso' time style gives traditional POSIX-locale
    time stamps like 'May 14  2001' and 'May 14 23:45' unless the user
    specifies a non-POSIX locale, in which case it uses ISO-style dates.
    This is the default.

  You can specify a time style with an option like --time-style='iso'
  or with an environment variable like TIME_STYLE='iso'.  GNU Emacs 21
  and later can parse ISO dates, but older Emacs versions cannot, so
  if you are using an older version of Emacs outside the default POSIX
  locale, you may need to set TIME_STYLE="locale".

* --full-time is now an alias for "-l --time-style=full-iso".


========================================================================
Here are the NEWS entries made from sh-utils-2.0 until the
point at which the packages merged to form the coreutils:

 [2.0.15]
* date no longer accepts e.g., September 31 in the MMDDhhmm syntax
* fix a bug in this package's .m4 files and in configure.ac
 [2.0.14]
* nohup's behavior is changed as follows, to conform to POSIX 1003.1-2001:
  - nohup no longer adjusts scheduling priority; use "nice" for that.
  - nohup now redirects stderr to stdout, if stderr is not a terminal.
  - nohup exit status is now 126 if command was found but not invoked,
    127 if nohup failed or if command was not found.
 [2.0.13]
* uname and uptime work better on *BSD systems
* pathchk now exits nonzero for a path with a directory component
    that specifies a non-directory
 [2.0.12]
* kill: new program
* who accepts new options: --all (-a), --boot (-b), --dead (-d), --login,
   --process (-p), --runlevel (-r), --short (-s), --time (-t), --users (-u).
   The -u option now produces POSIX-specified results and is the same as
   the long option `--users'.  --idle is no longer the same as -u.
* The following changes apply on systems conforming to POSIX 1003.1-2001,
  and are required by the new POSIX standard:
   - `date -I' is no longer supported.  Instead, use `date --iso-8601'.
   - `nice -NUM' is no longer supported.  Instead, use `nice -n NUM'.
* New 'uname' options -i or --hardware-platform, and -o or --operating-system.
   'uname -a' now outputs -i and -o information at the end.
   New uname option --kernel-version is an alias for -v.
   Uname option --release has been renamed to --kernel-release,
   and --sysname has been renamed to --kernel-name;
   the old options will work for a while, but are no longer documented.
* 'expr' now uses the LC_COLLATE locale for string comparison, as per POSIX.
* 'expr' now requires '+' rather than 'quote' to quote tokens;
    this removes an incompatibility with POSIX.
* date -d 'last friday' would print a date/time that was one hour off
    (e.g., 23:00 on *thursday* rather than 00:00 of the preceding friday)
    when run such that the current time and the target date/time fall on
    opposite sides of a daylight savings time transition.
    This problem arose only with relative date strings like `last monday'.
    It was not a problem with strings that include absolute dates.
* factor is twice as fast, for large numbers
 [2.0.11]
* setting the date now works properly, even when using -u
* `date -f - < /dev/null' no longer dumps core
* some DOS/Windows portability changes
 [2.0j]
* `date -d DATE' now parses certain relative DATEs correctly
 [2.0i]
* fixed a bug introduced in 2.0h that made many programs fail with a
 `write error' when invoked with the --version option
 [2.0h]
* all programs fail when printing --help or --version output to a full device
* printf exits nonzero upon write failure
* yes now detects and terminates upon write failure
* date --rfc-822 now always emits day and month names from the `C' locale
* portability tweaks for Solaris8, Ultrix, and DOS
 [2.0g]
* date now handles two-digit years with leading zeros correctly.
* printf interprets unicode, \uNNNN \UNNNNNNNN, on systems with the
  required support;  from Bruno Haible.
* stty's rprnt attribute now works on HPUX 10.20
* seq's --equal-width option works more portably
 [2.0f]
* fix build problems with ut_name vs. ut_user
 [2.0e]
* stty: fix long-standing bug that caused test failures on at least HPUX
  systems when COLUMNS was set to zero
* still more portability fixes
* unified lib/: now that directory and most of the configuration framework
  is common between fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
 [2.0d]
* fix portability problem with sleep vs lib/strtod.c's requirement for -lm
 [2.0c]
* fix portability problems with nanosleep.c and with the new code in sleep.c
 [2.0b]
* Regenerate lib/Makefile.in so that nanosleep.c is distributed.
 [2.0a]
* sleep accepts floating point arguments on command line
* sleep's clock continues counting down when sleep is suspended
* when a suspended sleep process is resumed, it continues sleeping if
  there is any time remaining
* who once again prints whatever host information it has, even without --lookup

========================================================================
For older NEWS entries for the fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils
packages, see ./old/*/NEWS.

  This package began as the union of the following:
  textutils-2.1, fileutils-4.1.11, sh-utils-2.0.15.