coreutils/old/textutils/NEWS

User-visible changes in release 1.15
* diagnose some improper or questionable invokations of csplit
* properly handle `echo |csplit - 1 1', rather than aborting
* join without -t now ignores leading blanks
* sort accepts new option: -z for NUL terminated records
* join accepts new option: --ignore-case, -i
User-visible changes in release 1.14
* sort -i and sort -d properly order strings containing ignored characters
* nl: rename misleading --first-page=N option to --starting-line-number=N.
* sort diagnoses invalid arguments to -k, then fails
* sort -n properly orders invalid integers with respect to valid integers
* sorting works with character offsets larger than corresponding field width
* sort's -b option and `b' modifier work
* sort -k2,2 works.
* csplit detects integer overflow when converting command line arguments
* sort accepts new option/flag, -g, for sorting numbers in scientific notation
* join accepts POSIX `-o 0' field specifier.
* tr 'a[b*512]' '[a*]' < /dev/null terminates
* tr '[:*3][:digit:]' 'a-m' and tr 'a[=*2][=c=]' 'xyyz' no longer fail
* special characters in tr's string1 and string2 may be escaped with backslash
User-visible changes in release 1.13
* md5sum: with --check, distinguish between open/read failure and bad checksum
* md5sum: remove -h, -s, -v short options
* md5sum: rename --verbose to --warn, --quiet to --status
* md5sum --check fails if it finds no properly formatted checksum lines
* sort -c prints `disorder on...' message on standard error, not stdout
* sort -k works as described in the texinfo documentation
* tail works on NetBSD
* md5sum reads and writes (de facto) standard Plumb/Lankester format
* sort accepts -.1 +.2 options for compatibility
* od works properly when dump limit is specified and is a multiple of
  bytes_per_block (set by --width, 16 by default).
User-visible changes in release 1.12
* sort no longer reports spurious errors on Ultrix systems
* new program: md5sum
* all --help messages have been improved
* join's -a1 and -a2 options work
* tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' no longer reads uninitialized memory
* sort properly handles command line arguments like `+7.2n'
* fmt properly formats paragraphs not terminated by a newline
* tail -f flushes stdout before sleeping so that it will output partial
  lines sooner
* sort properly orders fields where one field is a proper prefix of the other
* sort properly interprets field offsets specified via the -k option
* dd, od, and tail work on systems for which off_t is long long (e.g. BSD4.4)
* wc is faster when not counting words
* wc now works even when file pointer isn't at beginning of file
* expand no longer seg faults with very long tab lists
User-visible changes in release 1.11
* fmt is built
User-visible changes in release 1.10
* skeletal texinfo documentation (mainly just the `invoking' nodes)
* new program: fmt
* tail -f on multiple files reports file truncation
* tail -q has been fixed so it never prints headers
* wc -c is much faster when operating on non-regular files
* unexpand gives a diagnostic (rather than a segfault) when given a name of
  a nonexistent file.
* cat, csplit, head, split, sum, tac, tail, tr, and wc no longer fail
  gratuitously when continued after a suspended read or write system call.
* cut interprets -d '' to mean `use the NUL byte as the delimiter' rather
  than reporting that no delimiter was specified and failing.
* `echo a:b:c: | cut -d: -f3,4' prints `c:'.  Before it printed just `c'.
* cut has been rewritten, is markedly faster for large inputs, and passes a
  fairly large test suite.
* sort properly handles the argument to the -T option.

Major changes in release 1.9.1:
* cut no longer ignores the last line of input when that line lacks a
  trailing newline character

Major changes in release 1.9:
* `echo a:b:c: | cut -d: -f3-' prints `c:' and
  `echo a:b | cut -d: -f1' prints `a'.
* the command `printf '\t\n' |fold -w n' now terminates.
  Before, it wouldn't stop for n less than 8.
* sort accepts and ignores -y[string] options for compatibilty with Solaris.
* cat -v /dev/null works on more systems
* od's --compatible (-C) flag renamed to --traditional (no short option)
* --help and --version exit successfully
* --help gives a one-line description of each option and shows the
  correspondence between short and long-named options.
* fix bug in cut.  Now `echo 'a:b:c:' | cut -d: -f3-' works.
  Before it printed `c' instead of `c:'
* csplit allows repeat counts to be specified via `{*}'.
* csplit accepts a new option, --suffix=format that supercedes the
  --digits option.  The --digits option will continue to work.
* csplit accepts a new option, --elide-empty-files.
* configure uses config.h, so DEFS won't exceed preprocessor limits of
  some compilers on the number of symbols defined via -D.
* work around problem where $(srcdir)/config.h was used instead of
  ../config.h -- this happened only when building in a subdirectory
  and when config.h remained in $(srcdir) from a previous ./configure.

Major changes in release 1.8:
* added non-ANSIfied version of memchr.c from GNU libc.

Major changes in release 1.7:
* none
Major changes in release 1.6:
* with the --version option programs print the version and exit immediately
* pr -2a really terminates
* pr -n produces multi-column output

Major changes in release 1.5:
* sort is 8-bit clean
* sort's -n and -M options no longer imply -b
* several bugs in sort have been fixed
* all programs accept --help and --version options
* od --compatible accepts pre-POSIX arguments
* pr -2a terminates

Major changes in release 1.4:
* add od and cksum programs
* move cmp to GNU diff distribution
* tail -f works for multiple files
* pr prints the file name in error messages
* fix some off by 1 errors in pr and fold
* optimize wc -c on regular files
* sort handles `-' argument correctly
* sort supports -T option
* tr ranges like a-a work
* tr x '' fails gracefully
* default sum output format is BSD compatible
* paste -d '' works