If you are experienced in using the LINUX command to grep unique words from large files, you’d love those amazing tools and wonder why windows do not have such a command in MS-DOS. Then, using Mobaxterm in Windows is a good choice.

I had a task to paste numerous lists in the Windows platform which should have the result of using the LINUX command, grep and sed, in some files. I tried to use it in Python. Yes, it is successfully running but the O(n) is very large and time-consuming. I was inspired by my colleagues. He showed me how to use git bash and Mobaxterm run in Windows by typing the LINUX command. Wow, it motivated me to keep researching the hidden function in Mobaxterm.

The latest version of Mobaxterm is v21.3. You can download portable or installers up to your environment.

This is your local terminal and you can start to run UNIX tools MobaXterm

If you need to change to other drives:

cd /drives

grep file

grep a file to generate text file

The original file: grep file

grep -i bianca movie_lines.txt > bianca.txt
head bianca.txt

grep file

Sample of output file grep file

The file is also created in windows folder grep file

Another powerful technique is running shell scripts in windows using bat file.

  1. Define your local mobaxterm_path environment variable
  2. Call mobaxterm and use its interface to run
  3. Run .sh
  4. Close the mobaxterm.exe when finishing
@ECHO OFF
SET mobaxterm_path_sh=D:\MobaXterm_Portable_v21.3\MobaXterm_Personal_21.3.exe
SET win_path=D:\Programming_practise\sh
call %mobaxterm_path_sh% -newtab -exec "cd /drives/d/Programming_practise/sh; sh test.sh" -exitwhendone

sh file content

grep

sed

Close the mobaxterm.exe when finishing

MobaXterm.exe -exitwhendone

For more, read documentation in section 5.4