Why? If you know the location of the utility you want to run on the OS you're running on, just use it directly instead of dealing with the O&M of keeping copies of something that the OS provides.

Agreed. Avoid "proprietary" extensions - and GNUisms are no different than the extensions to standard protocols that Microsoft provides.

---------- Post updated at 10:10 AM ---------- Previous update was at 10:02 AM ----------

But that doesn't prevent someone from prepositioning malicious code in /tmp if they know you're going to run "/tmp/PRINTF".

I don't see the point of any complex workaround. Utilities behave differently on different flavors of Unix. You know what flavor you're running on, you know which utility you want run. The only way to deal with it is - get this - deal with it.

Deal with it directly and in ONE place - the script you're writing. Put in if/else or case statements for each OS flavor you support. Add comments to explain WHY you're using each utility from that location, because a few months or years from now, you won't remember. If you have a set of scripts, all of them can source ONE common script to set envvals for utilities.

Don't copy OS-provided binaries to custom locations - who's going to maintain that when the OS is updated?

Keep it simple - and in ONE place - or you won't be able to keep it working.