[Culture] When were the gnu coreutils written?

[thomas]

Hello,

Although this mailing list is devoted to bug reports, I thought people
here would be kind enough to answer the following question : do you
know when the file/shell/text-utils were written? The GNU project was
started in 1984, but how long did it take to have a decent GNU
userland? For instance, do you know when ls/cp/cat and so on were
released for the first time and could replace their unix counterparts?

I am writing a paper with an historic section but I have found nothing
about the history of the coreutils, thus I thank people who can give
an answer.

Bye!

Thomas