PHP Coreutils

A lightweight, pure-PHP implementation of classic Unix core utilities.

Overview

PHP Coreutils aims to provide a familiar set of Unix-like tools implemented entirely in PHP, without relying on shell execution (exec, shell_exec, etc.). The goal is simplicity, portability, and usability in environments where shell access is limited or unavailable.

This project is inspired by the philosophy of traditional Unix utilities:

• Do one thing well
• Keep interfaces simple
• Allow composition of small tools

Motivation

In many environments—such as shared hosting or web-based file managers—access to system-level utilities is restricted. PHP Coreutils fills that gap by offering a minimal, self-contained toolkit for file and text manipulation using pure PHP.

Features

• Pure PHP implementation (no external dependencies required)
• Unix-like command semantics
• Designed for portability across environments
• Safe for restricted or sandboxed execution contexts

Example

$data = cat("file.txt");
$data = grep("ERROR", $data);
$count = wc($data);

Philosophy

This project does not attempt to fully replicate a Unix shell. Instead, it provides function-based equivalents of common utilities, allowing developers to compose operations programmatically.

Pipelines are represented through function composition rather than shell pipes:

$count = wc(
    grep("ERROR",
        cat("file.txt")
    )
);

Scope

The project focuses on core utilities such as:

• File operations (ls, cp, mv, rm, etc.)
• Text processing (cat, grep, head, tail, wc, etc.)
• Shell built-in (echo, cd, print, pwd, etc.)

The goal is not to achieve full parity with system implementations, but to provide practical and predictable behavior.

Installation

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/nerun/php-coreutils.git

Include it in your project as needed.

Usage

Functions are designed to be simple and composable. Each function:

• Accepts standard PHP data types (e.g., strings or arrays)
• Returns data suitable for further processing

Refer to the source code for available functions and usage patterns.

Limitations

• Not a replacement for a real shell environment
• May load entire files into memory depending on implementation
• Behavior may differ from native Unix utilities in edge cases

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Keep changes:

• Small
• Focused
• Consistent with the project philosophy