Introduction[]
A shell script is in its simplest form, a recipe, where each line represents a command that is processed by the shell. For example, you may write a shell script to be used as a backup program, that collects a group of files, zips them, and then emails them to a specific email address.
Technically, a shell script is a program, with the advantage that you can quickly design and prototype your application without needing to use a low-level language like C.
Repetitive Tasks[]
Shell scripts help to automate repetitive tasks, and in addition, they can be called automatically from UNIX's cron daemon to that the shell script is executed on a schedule.
Paired with Cygwin[]
Cygwin ships with the bash shell, and with it you can call Cygwin binaries (usually in C:\cygwin\bin\), as well as MS Windows binaries (see here ).