Cornerstone Software Ltd

I often find myself wanting a number of command-line utilities for fixing problems, applying patches etc without having to be physically there. I might be on the phone to someone, or accessing a PC remotely, so I can’t copy them on via a CD or USB stick. Small, reliable programs that do the job well, with a minimum of fuss - thinks like editing configuration files, viewing logs, getting patches, zipping or unzipping files.

I’ve collected a few over the years, and some of them I’ve packaged up and put on this website. Mostly for my benefit, but you might have a use for them too.

You can see them on the Downloads page, or directly here

It’s a self extracting exe (command line of course!). Although there are many free utilities I could recommend, these particular ones are really good versions of what they do, and I find myself constantly using them, even after trying alternatives.

• Notepad2 by Florian Balmer - a replacement for notepad with several essential features, like the ability to handly Unix-style line endings. Also quite good for editing XML, although it doesn’t check for validity
• zip and unzip (from the InfoZip suite of tools) - essential for unpacking fixed versions of programs in the field, or creating and restoring backups
• GNU wget - for fetching files of web and ftp sites without using a web browser

None of these need installation. Just stick in a tempory directory and go.

There are a number of other utilities I’m in search of good freeware version of, and that I would like to use (ie user friendly, whether that user is me or the proverbial Aunt Betty).

• A good grep and sed that can handle Unicode.
• A freeware ROBOCOPY (comes with the Windows resource kits)
• A command-line, ideally scriptable, FTP client, with resume support and passive mode at least. On my own PC I normally use FileZilla but it isn’t the tiddler I’m looking for. Something I could tell someone on the phone how to use (which is where command lines are great)

Of course, everyone will have their own list - and indeed there are many more programs I rely on, but most can be installed on my laptop and used from there. I’m sure I’d think of more if I put my brain to it.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 1st, 2006 at 12:05 pm and is filed under Technical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.