xfce4-dotfiles/.oh-my-zsh/plugins/gnu-utils

gnu-utils plugin

This plugin binds GNU coreutils to their default names, so that you don't have to call them using their prefixed name, which starts with g. This is useful in systems which don't have GNU coreutils installed by default, mainly macOS or FreeBSD, which use BSD coreutils.

To use it, add gnu-utils to the plugins array in your zshrc file:

plugins=(... gnu-utils)

The plugin works by changing the path that the command hash points to, so instead of ls pointing to /bin/ls, it points to wherever gls is installed.

Since hash -rf or rehash refreshes the command hashes, it also wraps hash and rehash so that the coreutils binding is always done again after calling these two commands.

Look at the source code of the plugin to see which GNU coreutils are tried to rebind. Open an issue if there are some missing.

Other methods

The plugin also documents two other ways to do this:

1. Using a function wrapper, such that, for example, there exists a function named ls which calls gls instead. Since functions have a higher preference than commands, this ends up calling the GNU coreutil. It has also a higher preference over shell builtins (gecho is called instead of the builtin echo).

2. Using an alias. This has an even higher preference than functions, but they could be overridden because of a user setting.

Author

• Sorin Ionescu.