Whatever hacky script you are writing already exists in GNU Core Utilities
When I think of bash, I think of writing hacky scripts that do random things utilizing “bash commands”. It turns out that the parts of bash that “do stuff” such as echo, cut, cat are part of a larger program called GNU Core Utilities.
The GNU Core Utilities are the basic file, shell and text manipulation utilities of the GNU operating system.These are the core utilities which are expected to exist on every operating system.Source: Coreutils - GNU core utilities I am working on a general purpose backup utility and this evening I was moments away from writing something like this:
perl -e (print split("/\//", "/foo/bar/baz.tar.gz")
My goal was to try to extract the base file name from a given directory (I recognize that that code does not actually do that). Then I realized that this was pure madness and there had to be a better way. This is when I discovered the handy basename program. It simply does the needful. GNU Core Utilities is full of all sorts of gems such as this one. My main takeaway from this is to read the entire GNU Core Utilities manual so I can stop writing horrible things.
Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
Most popular posts this month
- 2024
- Reinstalling Windows at 1am
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- My Custom Miniflux CSS Theme
- How to Disable Wayland in Debian Testing
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- Underused Techniques for Effective Emails from Refactoring English
- Death by a thousand slops from daniel.haxx.se
- The AGI economy is coming faster than you think from Freethink
- Rolling the ladder up behind us from Xe Iaso's blog
- In Praise of “Normal” Engineers from charity.wtf
- Reports of Bluesky's death have been greatly exaggerated from The Torment Nexus
- What Would a Kubernetes 2.0 Look Like from matduggan.com
- We Can Just Measure Things from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
One Year of Lifting Weights
We visited Portugal last year. I still remember how heavy the luggage felt that we had with us: 2 suitcases, weighing around 20 kg each. One year later, I now joke about that, and laugh, whenever I tell anyone about it. I didn’t think much of it at the tim…
via ttntm.me - Blog August 1, 2025Secret Cinema - Grease
I was lucky enough to score tickets to last-night's dress rehearsal. It would be unfair to review this like a completed show, instead this is a preview on what to expect and some thoughts on the "immersive" genre. Very mild spoilers ahead. …
via Terence Eden’s Blog August 1, 2025P&B: Emma Goto
This is the 101st edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Emma Goto and her blog, emgoto.com To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new int…
via Manuel Moreale August 1, 2025Generated by openring