| Developer(s) | GNU Project |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 9.2[1] 
/ 20 March 2023 |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C, shell script[2] |
| Operating system | Unix-like |
| Type | Miscellaneous utilities |
| License | 2007[a]: GPL-3.0-or-later 2002[b]: GPL-2.0-or-later |
| Website | www |
The GNU Core Utilities or coreutils is a package of GNU software containing implementations for many of the basic tools, such as cat, ls, and rm, which are used on Unix-like operating systems.
In September 2002, the GNU coreutils were created by merging the earlier packages textutils, shellutils, and fileutils, along with some other miscellaneous utilities.[3] In July 2007, the license of the GNU coreutils was updated from GPL-2.0-or-later to GPL-3.0-or-later.[4]
The GNU core utilities support long options as parameters to the commands, as well as the relaxed convention allowing options even after the regular arguments (unless the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable is set). Note that this environment variable enables a different functionality in BSD.
See the List of GNU Core Utilities commands for a brief description of included commands.
Alternative implementation packages are available in the FOSS ecosystem, with a slightly different scope and focus, or license. For example, BusyBox which is licensed under GPL-2.0-only, and Toybox which is licensed under 0BSD.
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