Here's a quick summary of PGP v2.6 commands. To encrypt a plaintext file with the recipient's public key: pgp -e textfile her_userid To sign a plaintext file with your secret key: pgp -s textfile [-u your_userid] To sign a plaintext file with your secret key and have the output readable to people without running PGP first: pgp -sta textfile [-u your_userid] To sign a plaintext file with your secret key, and then encrypt it with the recipient's public key: pgp -es textfile her_userid [-u your_userid] To encrypt a plaintext file with just conventional cryptography, type: pgp -c textfile To decrypt an encrypted file, or to check the signature integrity of a signed file: pgp ciphertextfile [-o plaintextfile] To encrypt a message for any number of multiple recipients: pgp -e textfile userid1 userid2 userid3 --- Key management commands: To generate your own unique public/secret key pair: pgp -kg To add a public or secret key file's contents to your public or secret key ring: pgp -ka keyfile [keyring] To extract (copy) a key from your public or secret key ring: pgp -kx userid keyfile [keyring] or: pgp -kxa userid keyfile [keyring] To view the contents of your public key ring: pgp -kv[v] [userid] [keyring] To view the "fingerprint" of a public key, to help verify it over the telephone with its owner: pgp -kvc [userid] [keyring] To view the contents and check the certifying signatures of your public key ring: pgp -kc [userid] [keyring] To edit the userid or pass phrase for your secret key: pgp -ke userid [keyring] To edit the trust parameters for a public key: pgp -ke userid [keyring] To remove a key or just a userid from your public key ring: pgp -kr userid [keyring] To sign and certify someone else's public key on your public key ring: pgp -ks her_userid [-u your_userid] [keyring] To remove selected signatures from a userid on a keyring: pgp -krs userid [keyring] To permanently revoke your own key, issuing a key compromise certificate: pgp -kd your_userid To disable or reenable a public key on your own public key ring: pgp -kd userid --- Esoteric commands: To decrypt a message and leave the signature on it intact: pgp -d ciphertextfile To create a signature certificate that is detached from the document: pgp -sb textfile [-u your_userid] To detach a signature certificate from a signed message: pgp -b ciphertextfile --- Command options that can be used in combination with other command options (sometimes even spelling interesting words!): To produce a ciphertext file in ASCII radix-64 format, just add the -a option when encrypting or signing a message or extracting a key: pgp -sea textfile her_userid or: pgp -kxa userid keyfile [keyring] To wipe out the plaintext file after producing the ciphertext file, just add the -w (wipe) option when encrypting or signing a message: pgp -sew message.txt her_userid To specify that a plaintext file contains ASCII text, not binary, and should be converted to recipient's local text line conventions, add the -t (text) option to other options: pgp -seat message.txt her_userid To view the decrypted plaintext output on your screen (like the Unix-style "more" command), without writing it to a file, use the -m (more) option while decrypting: pgp -m ciphertextfile To specify that the recipient's decrypted plaintext will be shown ONLY on her screen and cannot be saved to disk, add the -m option: pgp -steam message.txt her_userid To recover the original plaintext filename while decrypting, add the -p option: pgp -p ciphertextfile To use a Unix-style filter mode, reading from standard input and writing to standard output, add the -f option: pgp -feast her_userid outputfile