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The GNU Project has announced the stable release of Coreutils 9.11, the latest update to its essential suite of command-line tools used on most Linux and Unix-like systems.
A key highlight of Coreutils 9.11 is a significant increase in data throughput for several widely used utilities.
- Zero-Copy I/O:Â On Linux,Â
cat andÂyes now use zero-copy I/O techniques, delivering up to 15x performance gains and improving the efficiency of data piping and stream generation. - ARM NEON Optimization: On ARM-based hardware, theÂ
wc -l command is now up to 4.5x faster on systems supporting NEON instructions. - Faster Shuffling: TheÂ
shuf utility now operates up to 2x faster by using unlocked stdio, reducing overhead during high-speed data randomization.
Previously, some core text utilities had difficulty handling multi-byte characters, such as UTF-8 symbols or emojis. Coreutils 9.11 resolves this by making cut, nl, and un/expand fully multi-byte character aware. Additionally, wc -m, which counts characters, is now up to 2.6x faster when processing multi-byte streams.
In addition to performance improvements, several tools have received updates to enhance compatibility with other Unix versions and modern workflows:
- cut:Â New options (
-w,Â-F,Â-O) have been introduced to improve compatibility with various implementations. - date:Â The utility now supports parsing dot-delimited dates in the dd.mm.yy format, which is widely used in many regions.
- cksum:Â TheÂ
--check flag now uses more robust file name quoting to prevent errors or security issues when processing files with unusual characters.
For a deeper technical dive into all the changes in GNU Coreutils 9.11, see the announcement.
