# coreutils/coreutils

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5,185 stars · 1,054 forks · C · GPL-3.0

## Links

- GitHub: https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils
- Homepage: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git
- awesome-repositories: https://awesome-repositories.com/repository/coreutils-coreutils.md

## Description

This project is a comprehensive suite of essential command-line tools and standardized Unix-like utilities. It provides the fundamental building blocks for system administration, file management, and text processing on Unix-like systems, implementing a wide range of POSIX command-line tools.

The collection is distinguished by its broad coverage of low-level system operations. This includes a complete toolkit for file system management, such as creating and modifying files and directories, and a specialized text processing toolkit for filtering, sorting, and transforming data streams.

The project also covers several critical system capability areas. These include system resource monitoring for checking hardware architecture and disk usage, security and access control for managing file permissions and cryptographic checksums, and process control for managing execution timeouts and environment variables. It further provides mathematical utilities for numeric expression evaluation and data representation tools for binary-to-ASCII encoding.

## Tags

### Part of an Awesome List

- [File and Directory Operations](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/awesome-lists/devtools/file-and-directory-management/file-and-directory-moves/file-and-directory-operations.md) — Provides the fundamental POSIX tools for creating, moving, deleting, and modifying files and directories.
- [Directory Content Listings](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/awesome-lists/devtools/file-and-directory-management/file-and-directory-moves/file-and-directory-operations/directory-content-listings.md) — Provides utilities for listing directory contents along with detailed metadata like permissions and ownership. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))

### Operating Systems & Systems Programming

- [GNU Core Utilities](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/gnu-core-utilities.md) — Implements the comprehensive suite of essential GNU command-line utilities for Unix-like operating systems.
- [File Integrity Verifications](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/checksum-utilities/data-integrity-checksums/file-integrity-verifications.md) — Provides checksum utilities like sha256sum and md5sum to verify file integrity.
- [Field Extraction Utilities](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/field-extraction-utilities.md) — The Coreutils library prints selected bytes, characters, or fields from each line using a delimiter. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Empty Directory Removal](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/file-and-directory-deletion/empty-directory-removal.md) — Implements utilities for the targeted removal of empty directories from the filesystem. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [File Content Statistics](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/file-content-statistics.md) — Provides utilities to count newlines, words, bytes, and characters in files. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [File Renaming and Relocations](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/file-renaming-and-relocations.md) — Provides standard operations for changing the name or directory location of files and folders. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [File Size Manipulation](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/file-size-manipulation.md) — Implements functionality to shrink or extend a file to a specified size. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Filesystem and Text Processing](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/filesystem-and-text-processing.md) — Ships a specialized toolkit for filtering, sorting, and transforming text data streams.
- [Hard Link Management](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/hard-link-management.md) — Provides the fundamental capability to create hard links, associating multiple filenames with a single inode. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Symbolic and Hard Link Creations](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/hard-link-management/symbolic-and-hard-link-creations.md) — Provides the standard utility for creating symbolic links that point to target paths by name. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Low-Level Data Copying](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/low-level-data-copying.md) — Provides low-level data copying capabilities with configurable block sizes and byte swapping. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Path Canonicalization](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/path-canonicalization.md) — Implements functionality to resolve links and output the absolute, canonicalized name of a file. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [POSIX Shell Utilities](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/posix-shell-utilities.md) — Implements a standardized set of utilities that adhere to the POSIX specification for shell-based system manipulation.
- [Process and Environment Control](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/process-and-environment-control.md) — Implements utilities for adjusting process priorities, managing environments, and signaling processes.
- [Path Component Extractors](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/system-administration-maintenance/file-system-management/file-systems/filename-templates/filename-parsers/path-component-extractors.md) — Provides utilities to split full filesystem paths into their constituent directory and filename components. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [System Administration Utilities](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/system-administration-maintenance/system-administration-utilities.md) — Provides low-level utilities for managing system processes, environment variables, and hardware information.
- [File Timestamp Preservers](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/system-administration-maintenance/system-clock-utilities/timestamp-injection/file-timestamp-preservers.md) — Provides the capability to manually update the access and modification timestamps of files. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Temporary File Generators](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/temporary-file-generators.md) — Provides a utility for generating unpredictable, unique temporary file names to prevent race conditions. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Binary Data Dumpers](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/binary-data-dumpers.md) — Writes file representations in octal, hexadecimal, or decimal formats for inspection. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Chroot Execution](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/chroot-execution.md) — Executes commands within a restricted root directory environment using chroot. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [File Concatenators](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/file-concatenators.md) — Copies multiple files or standard input to standard output. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [File Head Utilities](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/file-head-utilities.md) — Prints the first specified lines or bytes from the beginning of a file. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Disk Write Synchronization](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/file-i-o-management/write-buffering/disk-write-synchronization.md) — Provides the capability to force the operating system to write buffered memory data to storage. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [File Record Reversers](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/file-record-reversers.md) — Copies files to output while reversing the order of records. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [File Tail Utilities](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/file-tail-utilities.md) — Prints the last specified lines or bytes from a file. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Input Stream Duplication](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/input-stream-duplication.md) — The Coreutils library copies standard input to standard output and one or more files. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Persistent Command Executions](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/persistent-command-executions.md) — Provides the nohup utility to execute commands that continue running after logout. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Random Line Permutations](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/random-line-permutations.md) — The Coreutils library outputs a random permutation of input lines or integers. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Secure Data Erasure](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/secure-data-erasure.md) — Provides forensic-level overwriting of files to ensure data cannot be recovered after erasure. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Sorted File Comparators](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/sorted-file-comparators.md) — Identifies lines common to two sorted files and lines unique to each. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Standard Output Printing](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/standard-i-o-bridges/standard-output-printing.md) — The Coreutils library writes strings to standard output and interprets backslash escapes. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [String Formatting Utilities](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/string-formatting-utilities.md) — The Coreutils library performs formatted printing of text using a specified format string. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [System Hostname Utilities](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/system-hostname-utilities.md) — Provides the hostname utility to print or set the system's network name. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Timed Execution Delays](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/operating-systems-systems-programming/timed-execution-delays.md) — Provides the sleep utility to pause the execution of the current process. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))

### System Administration & Monitoring

- [Command Line System Administration](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/system-administration-monitoring/command-line-system-administration.md) — Implements a standardized suite of command-line utilities for managing system resources and performing administrative tasks via a terminal.
- [System Resource Monitors](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/system-administration-monitoring/real-time-monitoring-systems/system-resource-monitors.md) — Provides utilities like df, du, and uptime to monitor system resources and performance.
- [Process Termination Signals](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/system-administration-monitoring/inter-process-communication-utilities/process-termination-signals.md) — Provides the kill utility to send signals to processes for termination or control. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [System Uptime Retrieval](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/system-administration-monitoring/monitoring-and-observability/observability-platforms/availability-uptime-trackers/system-uptime-retrieval.md) — Retrieves and formats the duration since the last system boot along with load averages. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [System Clock Management](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/system-administration-monitoring/system-clock-management.md) — Provides utilities to display and set the system clock and calendar. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [System Information Summaries](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/system-administration-monitoring/system-information-summaries.md) — Displays the kernel name, network node, version, and operating system. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Text Character Transformation](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/system-administration-monitoring/text-character-transformation.md) — The Coreutils library replaces or deletes specific characters in standard input. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))

### Data & Databases

- [Date and Time Libraries](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/data-databases/date-and-time-libraries.md) — Provides the date utility for converting timestamps and formatting temporal data. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.txt))
- [Binary Encodings](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/data-databases/data-serialization-formats/data-formats/output-format-rendering/binary-encodings.md) — Renders raw binary data into printable ASCII representations such as base64. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Sort-Merge Joins](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/data-databases/database-query-joins/sort-merge-joins.md) — Combines two sorted files by matching lines with an identical join field. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [File Status Retrieval](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/data-databases/file-storage-and-metadata-management/file-status-retrieval.md) — Displays detailed file and file system metadata, such as inodes and timestamps. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Text File Merging](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/data-databases/text-file-merging.md) — The Coreutils library joins lines from multiple files side-by-side using a specified delimiter. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))

### Development Tools & Productivity

- [Directory Creation](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/development-tools-productivity/directory-creation.md) — Provides the standard utility for creating new directories and missing parent paths via the command line. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Directory Copying](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/development-tools-productivity/file-copying-utilities/privileged-file-copying/directory-copying.md) — Provides utilities for duplicating files and directory trees while preserving attributes and links. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Recursive File Operations](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/development-tools-productivity/file-copying-utilities/recursive-file-operations.md) — Implements recursive operations for the complete removal of directory trees and their contents. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Shell Environment Managers](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/development-tools-productivity/shell-environment-managers.md) — Provides tools to manage environment variables and process execution across shell sessions. ([source](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/coreutils/coreutils@master/README.md))
- [Text Processing Utilities](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/development-tools-productivity/terminal-shell-cli/terminal-cli-enhancements/shell-terminal-utilities/general-enhancements-tooling/terminal-utilities/text-output-processing/text-processing-utilities.md) — Provides a comprehensive set of command-line utilities for filtering, pattern matching, and transforming text-based data.
- [Working Directory Getters and Setters](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/development-tools-productivity/working-directory-configuration/working-directory-getters-and-setters.md) — Implements the standard utility to retrieve the absolute path of the current working directory. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Custom File Sorting](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/development-tools-productivity/custom-file-sorting.md) — Orders lines from files based on specified keys or locales. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Disk Usage Estimation](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/development-tools-productivity/disk-space-management/disk-space-analysis/disk-usage-estimation.md) — Calculates the disk space required for specific files or directories. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [File System Space Reporting](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/development-tools-productivity/disk-space-management/file-system-space-reporting.md) — Displays the available and used storage space across mounted file systems. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Pattern-Based File Splitting](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/development-tools-productivity/file-pattern-matching/regex-based-file-selection/pattern-based-file-splitting.md) — The Coreutils library creates multiple output files based on regular expression matches. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Line Numbering Utilities](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/development-tools-productivity/line-numbering-utilities.md) — The Coreutils library adds line numbers to input with distinct numbering styles for sections. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Line Wrapping Engines](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/development-tools-productivity/line-wrapping-engines.md) — The Coreutils library breaks long lines at a specified width or word boundary. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Checksum Verifiers](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/development-tools-productivity/script-validators/checksum-verifiers.md) — Provides utilities that use cryptographic hashes to verify that files have not been altered. ([source](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/coreutils/coreutils@master/README.md))
- [Command-Scoped Environments](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/development-tools-productivity/terminal-environment-variables/session-environment-variable-exporters/command-scoped-environments.md) — Provides the env utility to run a program in a modified environment. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Command Execution Context Overrides](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/development-tools-productivity/working-directory-configuration/working-directory-getters-and-setters/command-execution-context-overrides.md) — Executes commands within a designated security context, overriding user and group identity. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))

### DevOps & Infrastructure

- [Environment Variable Readers](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/devops-infrastructure/environment-variables/environment-variable-readers.md) — Provides the env and printenv utilities to display the values of environment variables. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Execution Timeouts](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/devops-infrastructure/execution-timeouts.md) — Provides the timeout utility to terminate commands that exceed a specified time limit. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))

### Security & Cryptography

- [File Mode Permissions](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/security-cryptography/file-mode-permissions.md) — Modifies the read, write, and execute permissions of files. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Ownership Reassignment](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/security-cryptography/granular-access-controls/resource-level-access-controls/ownership-based-access-controls/ownership-reassignment.md) — Implements tools for changing the owner and group attributes of files to manage access controls. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))

### Business & Productivity Software

- [File Name Sanitizers](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/business-productivity-software/automated-file-naming/file-name-sanitizers.md) — Provides utilities to validate if filenames are portable and compatible across different operating systems. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [File Splitting and Joining](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/business-productivity-software/file-splitting-and-joining.md) — Divides files into smaller volumes based on line count or size. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Text Reflow Tools](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/business-productivity-software/paragraph-formatting/text-reflow-tools.md) — The Coreutils library joins lines to a specified width to produce clean paragraphs. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))

### Content Management & Publishing

- [Filesystem Attribute Preservation](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/content-management-publishing/directory-archiving/permission-preserving-archives/filesystem-attribute-preservation.md) — Copies files while preserving ownership, group, and permission mode bits. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))

### Scientific & Mathematical Computing

- [Prime Factorization Algorithms](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/scientific-mathematical-computing/numerical-mathematical-foundations/arithmetic-number-types/multiplication-algorithms/number-theory-algorithms/prime-factorization-algorithms.md) — Implements procedures for decomposing integers into products of prime numbers. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Expression Evaluators](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/scientific-mathematical-computing/numerical-mathematical-foundations/mathematical-libraries-and-utilities/mathematical-libraries/expression-evaluators.md) — Includes an expression evaluator for calculating the results of numeric or string expressions. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Numerical Representation Converters](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/scientific-mathematical-computing/numerical-mathematical-foundations/numerical-representation-converters.md) — Converts numbers between human-readable formats and raw numeric representations. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Numerical Sequence Generation](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/scientific-mathematical-computing/numerical-sequence-generation.md) — Generates sequences of numbers within a specified interval. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))
- [Topological Sorting](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/scientific-mathematical-computing/topological-sorting.md) — Produces a total linear ordering of items based on a partial ordering of strings. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))

### Software Engineering & Architecture

- [Text Line Deduplication](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/software-engineering-architecture/in-place-array-manipulations/duplicate-removal/text-line-deduplication.md) — Discards adjacent repeated lines from text files or data streams. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))

### Web Development

- [Process Priority Adjusters](https://awesome-repositories.com/f/web-development/server-process-management/process-priority-adjusters.md) — Provides the nice utility to run a command with a modified CPU priority. ([source](https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html))