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
- My Custom Miniflux CSS Theme
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- 2024
- Using cgit
- Making cgit Pretty
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- Avi Alkalay: Uniqlo T-Shirt Bash Script Easter Egg from Fedora People
- Offline 23 hours a day from Derek Sivers blog
- Pluralistic: California can stop Larry Ellison from buying Warners (28 Feb 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- On Alliances from Smashing Frames
- Acting ethically in an imperfect world from Smashing Frames
- Diffusion of Responsibility from Smashing Frames
- My AI Adoption Journey from Mitchell Hashimoto
- Fedora Magazine: Contribute to Fedora 44 KDE and GNOME Test Days from Fedora People
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Your Data Is Made Powerful By Context (so stop destroying it already)
In logs as in life, the relationships are the most important part. AI doesn't fix this. It makes it worse.
via charity.wtf March 9, 2026Not in My Back Forty!
Every Transport Project Worth Building Faced Protests. Canada's Alto High-Speed Rail Line is No Exception.
via High Speed March 9, 2026Pluralistic: Billionaires are a danger to themselves and (especially) us (09 Mar 2026)
Today's links Billionaires are a danger to themselves and (especially) us: A billionaire is a machine for producing policy failures at scale. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Librarians Against DRM; Copyright maximalist MP i…
via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow March 9, 2026Generated by openring