Sometime it is necessary to compress or expand gz or tar files, print the sequences of printable characters from binary files or something similar. There are terminal commands which do such operations in Linux but in Windows usually it is necessary to download in install extra tool. However it is Windows Subsystem for Linux permits to do it easily. There are several example below.
1. Search for ASCII sequences which contains word service in msedge.exe application:
:/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/Microsoft/Edge/Application# strings msedge.exe | grep se rvice The service ticket is null. download_service service_manager disabled-by-default-gpu.service ..\..\base\path_service.cc Cannot enumerate running services. service-sandbox-type service service_with_jit asset_store_service edge_windows_copilot_service ..\..\sandbox\win\src\broker_services.cc |
2. Get property of wordpad.exe:
:/mnt/c/Program Files (x86)/Windows NT/Accessories# file wordpad.exe wordpad.exe: PE32 executable (GUI) Intel 80386, for MS Windows, 6 sections |
3. Compress text file to gz file:
:/mnt/c/Temp# gzip -c textfile.txt > textfile.gz :/mnt/c/Temp# gzip -l textfile.gz compressed uncompressed ratio uncompressed_name 825 18197 95.6% textfile |