Common Cygwin Commands

I am assuming that you also installed cygwin in c:\cygwin. Activate cygwin using below command in the command prompt.

C:\>cygwin\cygwin

CP
Copy from here to there.

$ cp -r path/fromDirectory path/toDirectory

CURL
Upload an archive at ftp location.

$ curl -T archive.tgz ftp://localhost -u newuser

GZIP
List the content of an archive.

$ gzip -l listContentsInMyFile.tar.gz

INFO

C:\>cygwin\cygwin
$ info commandName

MAN

C:\>cygwin\cygwin
$ man commandName

RM
Remove a file.

rm -v filename.ext

Remove a directory.

rm -rv directory

TAR

C:\>c:\cygwin\bin\tar -cvf createdMyStuff_C_Drive.tar myStuff_C_Drive
C:\>c:\cygwin\bin\tar -xvf extractMyStuff_C_Drive.tar

Uses GZIP to compress the file. tar converts directory into a file. gzip just compresses a file.

$ tar -cvzf backup.tgz directory

c = create, v = verbose, z = compress with GZIP, f = archive name

Extract the contents from the zip file.

$ tar -xvzf backup.tgz 

x = extract, v = verbose, z = use GZIP, f = archive name

For better compression you can use below also.

$ tar -cvjf backup.tar.bz2 directory

Decompress the backup using below command.

$ tar -xvjf backup.tar.bz2