Lucid Tips

Ask any Linux/Unix administrator if they could perform their daily tasks without ‘grep’ and their answer would be an emphatic NO!!!. Windows lacks many of the unix commands/utilities that are very simple yet highly efficient. Luckily there is a collection of GNU Unix-like utilities that are available for Windows.

UnxUtils is not an emulator like Cygwin. It is a freeware collection of approx 120 different executables that are only dependent on Microsoft C-runtime (msvcrt.dll).

1. Download UnxUtils.zip
2. Extract to a C:\UnxUtils (may I recommend 7-zip).
3. Download UnxUpdates.zip
4. Extract to C:\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin

All the executables are located in C:\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin folder so to make usage easier add “C:\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin” to your PATH variable.

1. Click Start
2. Right click “My Computer” and select Properties
3. Click on “Advanced” tab
4. Click on “Environment Variables” (see screenshot)
5. Under “System Variables” select “Path” and then click “Edit” (see screenshot)
6. Append “;C:\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin” to the end of Variable value. Note the semi-colon before C:\ (see screenshot)
7. Click OK. You will be returned to “Environment Variables” window.
8. Click OK. You will be returned to “System Properties” window.
9. Click OK

You should now be able to use UnxUtils. To give it a test open command prompt and run the following command. You should see a screen similar to one below.

ls -l c:/ | grep -i win

UnxUtils also includes a shell which can be handy if you want to do some shell scripting. To start the shell run c:\UnxUtils\bin\sh.exe (see screenshot) If you are frequently using the shell it is easier to create a shortcut on the desktop or quick launch bar.