> Bash scripts run in Powershell

...if you install Bash [1] so PowerShell can execute it. In much the same way that batch files can call Bash, or Windows Explorer can if you double click on it.

> A caveat to the accepted answer is that sh is not included in vanilla Powershell. I had to install Git, which optionally adds some UNIX tools to the PATH in Powershell, sh.exe being one of them.

> Note: sh.exe or another *nix shell must be associated with the .sh extension.

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1098786/run-bash-script-f...

What's your criteria for a terminal emulator that isn't terrible? I have cygwin running bash with a working .bashrc file in MintTTY and that seems ok?

You're probably better off installing standalone MSYS with something like mingw-get-installer which also gives you a convenient GUI for installing other common GNU/Unix utilities (and a somewhat crappy command line package manager). It even gives you a half decent terminal (in the form of mintty).

I tend to do most of my windows scripting using bash cause it's just less effort that way. Still, it's not a first class citizen like on Linux, and Microsoft seems to be going down it's own path with powershell (which at best gives a nod to the existence of things like bash, but not a lot more).

I don't think that would be terribly useful, as a bunch of concepts important to Windows the BSD core utilities would have no idea about. Registry, NTFS, etc.

Honestly, I find 'nix users unwilling to learn PowerShell the exact same as Windows user unwilling to learn a 'nix shell and core utilities.

PowerShell doesn't have SED -- but it has pipeline replacement.

  $ cat .\x.txt | %{$_ -replace "sed", "powershell"}

It also has ideas that are completely different... rather than plain text pipe, it has an object pipe, which lets you do stuff like:

  $ ps | sort company | ft ProcessName -groupby company

Which outputs your processes in table format grouped by company, like

  ...
   Company: Greenshot

  ProcessName
  -----------
  Greenshot

   Company: inkscape.org

  ProcessName
  -----------
  inkscape

   Company: IvoSoft

  ProcessName
  -----------
  ClassicStartMenu

   Company: Microsoft Corporation

  ProcessName
  -----------
  taskhostex
  conhost
  explorer
  ...