Old Tools, New Ideas: What the Rust Utilities Taught Me
Ishe Chinyoka
- 5 minutes readTable of Contents
One of the pleasures of being a textsmith is watching familiar tools evolve.
For decades, the GNU and BSD command-line utilities have been the foundation of Unix-like systems. They are dependable, well documented, and available almost everywhere. Learn grep, find, sed, and awk, and you can sit down at almost any Linux or Unix machine and feel at home.
Yet over the past few years I have found myself increasingly fascinated by a new generation of command-line utilities. Many are written in Rust. They do not necessarily reinvent the Unix philosophy; instead, they ask a simple question:
What if these classic tools were designed today?
Evolution Rather Than Revolution
Take ripgrep, or rg.
At first glance it looks like another implementation of grep. It searches text. It understands regular expressions. It prints matching lines.
But the experience is subtly different.
Instead of writing:
grep -R "New ways" .I simply write:
rg "New ways"There is almost nothing to explain.
The command assumes I want to search the current directory. It recursively walks the tree, skips files that are obviously binary, respects .gitignore, and returns the results almost immediately.
That is not a revolutionary idea.
It is simply a series of sensible defaults.
As a user, I find myself thinking less about how to search and more about what I am searching for.
Good software often disappears behind good defaults.
Finding Files Without the Ceremony
The same thought struck me when I first used fd.
For years I have happily used find.
It is one of the great Unix programs. It can express astonishingly complex searches, execute commands, prune directory trees, compare timestamps, inspect permissions, and much more.
But I would be dishonest if I claimed I remembered all of its syntax without consulting the manual.
For everyday work I usually want something much simpler:
fd reportor
fd '\.md$'Again, sensible assumptions take centre stage.
Search recursively.
Ignore hidden directories unless asked.
Respect version-control ignores.
Present clean output.
The result feels less like replacing find and more like creating the version I reach for ninety percent of the time.
When I need the remaining ten percent, find is still there.
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
Perhaps this is what impresses me most.
These new utilities are not trying to erase decades of Unix tradition.
They exist because that tradition proved itself.
Without grep, there would be no ripgrep.
Without find, there would be no fd.
Without the Unix philosophy, there would be no reason to compose small programs that each perform one task exceptionally well.
Innovation is often easiest when standing on a strong foundation.
I Still Reach for GNU
Despite my fascination with these modern tools, I still find myself returning to the traditional GNU utilities.
There is a practical reason.
If I log into an unfamiliar Linux server, I know grep, find, sed, awk, and friends will almost certainly be there.
That portability is incredibly valuable.
A command remembered today will likely still work ten years from now.
That kind of stability is one of Unix’s greatest strengths.
Learning the GNU tools is therefore an investment that pays dividends throughout a career.
More Than One Attempt
The idea of improving the command line is not new.
Long before today’s Rust renaissance, projects such as moreutils added thoughtful tools that complemented the traditional Unix toolbox rather than replacing it.
Whenever I install a new Linux system, one of the first packages I reach for is moreutils.
Several of its programs have quietly become part of my workflow.
One of my favourites is vidir, which opens a directory listing in a text editor so multiple files can be renamed in one editing session.
It feels completely natural to someone who already thinks in terms of plain text.
Many of the utilities in moreutils are small gems waiting to be discovered.
They may never have achieved the popularity of today’s Rust tools, but they solved real problems with the same Unix spirit of doing one thing well.
The Future Is Already Arriving
Whether these Rust utilities remain optional or become standard is an interesting question.
Some Linux distributions are already experimenting with replacing long-established components with Rust implementations.
Ubuntu’s work around sudo-rs is one example of this broader trend.
It would not surprise me if future Linux systems gradually adopted Rust implementations of more traditional utilities where compatibility and maturity allow.
Whether that ultimately happens is less important than what it represents.
The command line is still alive.
People are still thinking carefully about how these programs should behave.
Forty years after many of the original tools were written, developers are still asking how they can be made simpler, safer, and faster.
That is an encouraging sign.
Tradition Can Be Modernized
As textsmiths, we should resist turning this into another campfire war.
There is no need to choose between GNU and Rust.
The GNU tools remain the language of Unix.
The newer utilities often improve the everyday experience through thoughtful defaults and modern implementation techniques.
The best approach is not blind loyalty to either camp.
Learn the traditional tools because they are universal.
Explore the newer ones because they may help you work more comfortably.
Every textsmith eventually develops favourite tools, but those preferences should be guided by productivity rather than fashion.
Watching this new generation of command-line software reminds me that the Unix tradition was never about preserving old programs unchanged.
It was about building simple tools that solve real problems.
If today’s developers can carry that philosophy forward while making those tools easier to use, then perhaps tradition is not being replaced after all.
It is simply finding new ways to express itself.