GNU Coreutils 8.31 Released With New basenc Command, Stat Prints File Creation Time

A new release of the GNU "Core Utilities" is out that brings with it the new basenc command.

The GNU Coreutils 8.31 release brings better handling of --version/--help arguments for a number of commands, the date command now supports the "+" conversion specification flag from POSIX.1-2017, sleep and other commands now accept floating point numbers in both the current and C locales, stat/tail are now familiar with Android's sdcardfs file-system, and a number of bug fixes,

One change worth pointing out as well is that stat now can print file creation time when running on a capable file-system paired with Linux 4.11+ and Glibc 2.28+ for having the necessary bits for carrying the file creation time.

Rounding out GNU Coreutils 8.31 is the new basenc command. The basenc command complements existing commands like base32/base64 and allows for specifying the encoding/decoding as arguments to this common command. Usage details on basenc are outlined via the documentation.

More details on GNU Coreutils 8.31 can be found via today's release announcement.