.

diff --git a/old/textutils/ChangeLog b/old/textutils/ChangeLog
index 88c65112513635b4661e7ab61f74ef70021ed13c..e107708cc5d4f197523828b9c1f2161b15b7bf20 100644 (file)
--- a/old/textutils/ChangeLog
+++ b/old/textutils/ChangeLog
@@ -133,7 +133,12 @@ Thu Sep 26 21:02:54 1996  Jim Meyering  <meyering@na-net.ornl.gov>
 
        * src/md5sum.c (usage): Remove references in --help output to
        the now-deprecated --string option.  Support for it will be
-       removed soon.
+       removed soon.  Using this option can provoke a memory access
+       violation on some systems because of (unavoidable in an efficient
+       implementation) alignment assumptions made by functions in md5.c.
+       md5sum.c could leave the option in and accomodate the alignment
+       restriction, but this option was intended solely for testing, and
+       the tests are now all file-oriented, so it's not necessary.
 
        * tests/md5sum-test/md5-rfc: Rewrite to avoid use of --string option.
 

diff --git a/old/textutils/NEWS b/old/textutils/NEWS
index 5ba23255e82758712290e1e711e2418bb6ca6a9f..ef512c9f2522e60f9ac5f7c061b57be98017e079 100644 (file)
--- a/old/textutils/NEWS
+++ b/old/textutils/NEWS
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 Changes in release 1.20
  Changes in test release 1.19p
+* md5sum's --string option is being deprecated and is no longer documented.
+  It is still accepted, but will be removed altogether in 1.21.
 * tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]' no longer fails when LC_CTYPE is set to
   iso_8859_1 on Solaris -- or any other character set with differing
   numbers of uppercase and lowercase characters