Whatever hacky script you are writing already exists in GNU Core Utilities

| linux | devops |

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

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

Tradeoffs to Continuous Software?

I came across this post from the tech collective crftd. about how software is in a process of “continuous disintegration”: One of the uncomfortable truths we sometimes have to break to people is that software isn't just never “done”. Worse even, it rot…

via Jim Nielsen’s Blog May 28, 2025

Pluralistic: America is a scam (28 May 2025)

Today's links America is a scam: Welcome to the age of cheating. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: 2010, 2015, 2020 Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: You keep readi…

via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow May 28, 2025

How I taught my 3-year-old to read like a 9-year-old

Tripling reading level through tutoring

via The Intrinsic Perspective May 28, 2025

Generated by openring