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- This is the GNU file manipulation utilities package. Most of these
- programs have significant advantages over their Unix counterparts,
- such as greater speed or additional flexibility.
-
- Changes from release 1.0 include some bug fixes, enhancements, and
- changes for POSIX conformance, including the addition of two programs
- invented by the POSIX committee. Changes from release 1.1 are an
- important bug fix for cp on systems that do not have the ftruncate
- system call. Changes from release 1.2 are the addition of a program
- to print files backwards and a program to install files, more bug
- fixes and POSIX and ANSI C changes, support for 16 bit machines, and
- backup file creation options.
-
- The fileutils are intended to be POSIX compliant (with BSD and other
- extensions), like the rest of the GNU system. They are not all quite
- there yet; however, the POSIX shell and utilities standard (1003.2)
- has not been finalized, either. They presently don't support
- internationalization features, since none of the C libraries that I
- have access to do. (The GNU C library will, but isn't finished.)
-
- The documentation for these programs is not finished yet, and needs to
- be rewritten. However, most of them accept descriptive long-named
- options in addition to Unix-style short-named options, which should
- help you figure out their additional features. Giving a `-h' option
- (or any invalid option) will produce a usage message. Some of the
- programs also have explanatory comments at the top of the source code.
-
- The ls, dir, and vdir commands are all separate executables instead of
- one program that checks argv[0] because people often rename these
- programs to things like gls, gnuls, l, etc., and renaming a program
- file shouldn't affect how it operates, so that people can get the
- behavior they want with whatever name they want.
-
- The GNU ls with the -s option, and at the top of long listings of
- directories, reports file sizes in units of 512 bytes by default, as
- required by POSIX. The GNU du does the same thing, for consistency.
- The GNU ls and du both have a -k option to make them report sizes in
- kilobytes instead.
-
- The GNU tail command has no -r option (print backwards). Reversing a
- file is really a different job from printing the end of a file; the
- BSD tail can get away with kludging it in because of its limited size
- buffer. A more versatile way than tail -r to reverse files is the
- `tac' command included in this package.
-
- The GNU rm, like every other program that uses getopt, lets you use the
- "--" option to indicate that all following arguments are non-options.
- To remove a file called "-f", you could either
- rm -- -f
- or
- rm ./-f
- The Unix rm's use of "-" for this purpose predates the development of
- the getopt standard syntax.
-
- The GNU cp, mv, and ln commands can now make backups of files that
- they are about to overwrite or remove. They make backups only when
- the -b (+backup) option is given.
-
- The type of backups made can be set with the VERSION_CONTROL
- environment variable, which can be overridden by the -V
- (+version-control) option. If VERSION_CONTROL is not set and -V
- (+version-control) is not given, the default backup type is
- `existing'.
-
- The value of VERSION_CONTROL and the argument to -V (+version-control)
- is like GNU Emacs' `version-control' variable; it also accepts
- synonyms that are more descriptive. The valid values are (unique
- abbreviations are accepted):
-
- t or numbered Always make numbered backups.
- nil or existing Make numbered backups of files that already
- have them, simple backups of the others.
- never or simple Always make simple backups.
-
- The suffix used for making simple backup files can be set with the
- SIMPLE_BACKUP_SUFFIX environment variable, which can be overridden by
- the -S (+suffix) option. If neither of those is given, the default is
- `~', as it is in Emacs.
-
- Suggestions and bug reports for these programs should be mailed to
- bug-gnu-utils@prep.ai.mit.edu.
-