January 9, 2009:


EXCITING NEWS: ELS is now on the WEB after years of PROCRASTINATION!

Please visit "els-software.org" for all your ELS needs and late-breaking
news.


MAILING LIST:

Please send email to "requestXXX@els-software.org (remove XXX)" requesting
to be placed on the "ELS ANNOUNCEMENT" mailing list if you'd like to receive
announcements regarding major releases and/or significant changes to ELS.
This mailing list will be very low bandwidth and you should receive no more
than 2 or 3 emails per millennium.


SIGNIFICANT CHANGES AS OF VERSION 1.50:

5) Added locale awareness to "els" (regular listings only) and "edate"

4) ACL support added for Linux2.6+

3) Makefile now uses output from "uname -s" as the OS target as well
   as significant restructuring and cleanup.

2) Added config program for automatically determining formats and sizes
   of time_t, st_ino, st_size, st_nlink, st_blocks at compile time.

1) Fixed checksums of files larger than 2^31 by using open64().


SIGNIFICANT CHANGES AS OF VERSION 1.49:

4) Quotaling (+Q option) now supports 32-bit UID and GIDs as of
   release 1.49h1!

3) Replaced sorting algorithms with quick-sort (extremely large
   directories now list up to 30 times faster!).

2) 1.49a2 fixes "-b" bug for characters >= 0x80

1) New option +c for displaying environment as part of the listing


SIGNIFICANT CHANGES AS OF VERSION 1.48:

7) Checksum algorithm option added as of 1.48f1.  E.g.:
	els +C=bsd +z +GCSN -RA		# similar to /usr/ucb/sum
	els +C=sysv +5l +z +GCSN -RA	# similar to /usr/bin/sum
	els +C=posix +z +GCsN -RA	# similar to /usr/bin/cksum
	els +C=crc32 +z +GCsN -RA	# crc32 algorithm

6) Cygwin is supported as of 1.48e1 (tested using cygwin 1.3.22 and 1.5.20)

5) Added floating point recognition and 'KkMmGgTt' (i.e. Kilo/Mega/Giga/
   Tera) modifiers to F'Q{...}' expressions.  For example, to list
   all files greater than 1.1M that were modified over half a year ago:
	els +F'Q{s>1.1M & m>.5Y}' -laR

4) New option +Q: Display Quotals (quota+total) for indicated hierarchy or
   files.  The quotal option will list the total size and number of files
   owned by each user/UID and group/GID.

3) New option +o: Specify file for output, e.g.:  els -laR +o=output.dat

2) The syntax of +t has evolved.  '+t=M' means to traverse mount-points,
   '+t=L' means to traverse expanded symbolic-links, '+t=LM' means to
   traverse both mount-points and expanded symbolic-links.  Note that
   '+t=L' is  effective only if '-L' is also specified, as '-L' is what
   enables expansion of symbolic-links.

1) ELS now returns a non-zero value if *any* errors occur during listing.


SIGNIFICANT CHANGES AS OF VERSION 1.47:

8) A Watch function (+W) has been added added as of release 1.47k1 allowing
   you to watch ELS's progress when processing large hierarchies containing
   numerous files (this option works best in conjunction with +F filtering
   when output is sparse and processing time is lengthy or when redirecting
   stdout to a file).  +W also interactively intercepts SIGQUIT (i.e. ^\)
   and will display the directory name currently being processed.

7) Version 1.47e1+ fixes a +F filtering problem under Linux.
   Version 1.47k1+ fixes a Segmentation fault problem under OSF1.

6) The -F flag was added to chdate and is now required if changing multiple
   files as of 1.47h1; if changing a single file then the -F flag is
   optional.  Moreover, chdate no longer requires quoting date arguments
   since the -F flag now helps distinguish between dates and files.  E.g.,
   the following are now equivalent:
	chdate Apr 1 12:34 file1
	chdate "Apr 1 12:34" file1
   Here the -F flag must be specified since multiple files are given:
	chdate -a Apr 1 2000 12:34 -F file1 file2 file3

5) The unusual filter function for ELS now supports specifying sparse
   files (i.e. files partially populated with data) as of 1.47g1.  For
   example, to list all sparse files under the mounted file systems /,
   /usr, and /var:
	els +F'U{s}' -laR / /usr /var

4) The option +Z=zonename was added as of release 1.47c2 allowing the TZ
   (i.e. timezone) setting to be changed during execution of els, chdate,
   and edate.

3) +Td (dos-style) and +Tw (windows-style) date formats added as
   of release 1.47b.

2) The meaning of +t has changed as of release 1.47b.  Specifying +t now
   causes file-systems to be traversed whereas before it inhibited traversal.
   Unless you want to potentially list multiple file-systems on your local
   host or across your network, you probably don't want to use the +t option.
   Changing the meaning of +t was an agonizing decision but was necessary as
   future releases will allow +t=<type> specifying the types of directories
   and/or file-systems to traverse.

1) The listing of large files (i.e. filesize > 2**31) under SunOS5.6+ and
   HPUX10+ is now supported as of release 1.47b.


UNIX NOW MORE THAN 10^9 SECONDS OLD:

Unix is now more than one-billion seconds old!  Execute the following
"edate" command to discover when this milestone was reached:
	edate -C 1000000000 +Z=GMT0


FTP/HTTP ACCESS:

There are several alternate sites that are hosting copies of ELS, but
keep in mind that their copies will probably not be as current as my
copy.  To download my most recent version please reference:

Most current version:
	http://els-software.org

Mirrored versions:
	http://www.sfr-fresh.com/els

Additionally, the HPUX users group carrires a pre-packaged version of ELS
specifically tailored for HPUX (but which is out-of-date):

	http://hpux.ee.ualberta.ca/hppd/hpux/Users/els-1.48a/
	(NB: this pre-packaged version is specific to HPUX and may
	present difficulties if used on non-HPUX systems)

Markb.
