Using UNIX tools under Windows
Written on April 3, 2009, by Milot Shala.

When I’m at home, I use Linux but while I’m at work I use Windows as a base operating system and Debian via virtual machine, but most of the time work related files are located under Windows which I need to manipulate with them and see the contents etc and since I was using Windows I am missing some of the GNU command line utilities at work and I did a google search two years ago (when I started using Windows for work) and found a very great port of the GNU command line utilities to Windows and now I am going to show you how to install and register an environment variable in order that your command prompt to know your commands.

First of all, the homepage of the GNU utilities is located in the URL below
http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/

but there you can just find the information on which GNU utilities are included because their download isn’t working, instead you can use this source forge URL below

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=9328&package_id=9393&release_id=490307

And when you download finished you can continue extracting it and copying it in drive C:\ (or other path that you specify, but you must remember the correct path in order to register the environment variable later).

When you copied the contents to your directory, it’s time to find the binary files which ones you will add to the environment variable, my GNU utilities directory is located under C:\UnxUtils and the path for binaries is this C:\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin and this is the path that you must register on your environment variable called PATH and below is shown how to get there.

First you need to go to the My Computer icon on your desktop then right click on it and select properties:

mcompprop

Then the system properties window will be showed and you must go to the tab labeled Advanced then click the button Environment Variables:

mcomppropadv

After that another window will pop up and under the System Variables group you must find the Path environment variable then select it and press edit button

mcompenvvarpath

When you press edit button another Window will pop up and let you edit the Path environment variable and the values must be separated with the ; character and following the path of binary files:

mcompeditpath

And then you can try executing commands in command prompt:

cmd

I just executed a command to show the number of all files and directories which are located under my C:\ drive.

  • http://rdfintrospector2.blogspot.com/ James Michael DuPont

    Hi Milot,

    I also work under windows, but dont use a vm, I use http://www.cygwin.com .

    It is also very easy to install and uses less resources than a VM.

    mike

  • http://codespartan.org/blog/ Milot Shala

    Hi Mike,

    Yes you are absolutely right! I’ve tried cygwin several years ago, but I will install it ASAP. Thanks for the recommendation!

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