Where can I find the source to "/bin/head" for a Mac OSX 10.4 system?

January 22, 2006 9:55 AM

Where can I find the source to "/bin/head" for a Mac OSX 10.4 system?
posted by paradroid to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Head is part of the GNU coreutils package. It might be modified a little for Mac OS X, but probably not.

http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/

Specifically, ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-5.93.tar.gz
posted by jbb7 at 10:05 AM on January 22, 2006

Best answer: The head command on my system (/usr/bin/head) is from BSD, not GNU. It's source code can be found here.
posted by mto at 10:08 AM on January 22, 2006

Response by poster: thanks, that brings me one step closer. but how can i compile just the head executable, and not the entire package?

i am trying to recover from an broken installer which clobbered /bin/head. i am worried that if i compile and install the entire coreutils package that i may end with more clobbering.
posted by paradroid at 10:12 AM on January 22, 2006

Response by poster: problem solved, thanks for the help.
posted by paradroid at 10:22 AM on January 22, 2006

For future reference, all of the Unixy bits of OS X can be found on opendarwin.org. You have to know a little bit about makefiles if you want to build something random under the tree versus the entire darwin build, but it's not too hard. That way, you know you're getting the same code that's inside the OS.
posted by beaverd at 2:38 PM on January 22, 2006