What Are Good Grep Tools for Windows? [Closed]
Any Recommendations on Grep Tools for Windows? Ideally Ones That Could Leverage 64-Bit Os. I'm Aware of Cygwin, of Course, and Have Also Found Powergrep, but...
28 Answers
FINDSTR is fairly powerful, supports regular expressions and has the advantages of being on all Windows machines already.
c:\> FindStr /?
Searches for strings in files.
FINDSTR [/B] [/E] [/L] [/R] [/S] [/I] [/X] [/V] [/N] [/M] [/O] [/P] [/F:file]
[/C:string] [/G:file] [/D:dir list] [/A:color attributes] [/OFF[LINE]]
strings [[drive:][path]filename[ ...]]
/B Matches pattern if at the beginning of a line.
/E Matches pattern if at the end of a line.
/L Uses search strings literally.
/R Uses search strings as regular expressions.
/S Searches for matching files in the current directory and all
subdirectories.
/I Specifies that the search is not to be case-sensitive.
/X Prints lines that match exactly.
/V Prints only lines that do not contain a match.
/N Prints the line number before each line that matches.
/M Prints only the filename if a file contains a match.
/O Prints character offset before each matching line.
/P Skip files with non-printable characters.
/OFF[LINE] Do not skip files with offline attribute set.
/A:attr Specifies color attribute with two hex digits. See "color /?"
/F:file Reads file list from the specified file(/ stands for console).
/C:string Uses specified string as a literal search string.
/G:file Gets search strings from the specified file(/ stands for console).
/D:dir Search a semicolon delimited list of directories
strings Text to be searched for.
[drive:][path]filename
Specifies a file or files to search.
Use spaces to separate multiple search strings unless the argument is prefixed
with /C. For example, 'FINDSTR "hello there" x.y' searches for "hello" or
"there" in file x.y. 'FINDSTR /C:"hello there" x.y' searches for
"hello there" in file x.y.
Regular expression quick reference:
. Wildcard: any character
* Repeat: zero or more occurances of previous character or class
^ Line position: beginning of line
$ Line position: end of line
[class] Character class: any one character in set
[^class] Inverse class: any one character not in set
[x-y] Range: any characters within the specified range
\x Escape: literal use of metacharacter x
\<xyz Word position: beginning of word
xyz\> Word position: end of word
Example usage: findstr text_to_find * or to search recursively findstr /s text_to_find *
Must Read
Based on recommendations in the comments, I've started using grepWin and it's fantastic and free.
(I'm still a fan of PowerGREP, but I don't use it anymore.)
I know you already mentioned it, but PowerGREP is awesome.
Some of my favorite features are:
- Right-click on a folder to run PowerGREP on it
- Use regular expressions or literal text
- Specify wildcards for files to include & exclude
- Search & replace
- Preview mode is nice because you can make sure you're replacing what you intend to.
Now I realize that the other grep tools can do all of the above. It's just that PowerGREP packages all of the functionality into a very easy-to-use GUI.
From the same wonderful folks who brought you RegexBuddy and who I have no affiliation with beyond loving their stuff. (It should be noted that RegexBuddy includes a basic version of grep (for Windows) itself and it costs a lot less than PowerGREP.)