On: Moreutils – Unix tools that nobody thought to writ...

[gpanders]

You’re right that defaulting to the GNU coreutils is probably more convenient. However, NOT doing this is a good way to ensure that any scripts you write remain portable and don’t use GNU extensions. That’s the reason I stick with the default BSD coreutils on macOS.

[fooblat → gpanders]

> You’re right that defaulting to the GNU coreutils is probably more convenient.

It's not about convenience. It is about having a development environment that matches the target runtime environment.

You can run into nasty surprises when the default behavior of a tool in your dev environment is different than in your production environment.

I've been writing shell scripts professionally for over 20 years and I have always taken this approach and it has served me well.

[saagarjha → fooblat]

You could also try restricting yourself to POSIX shell.