Is there a Pattern Matching Utility like GREP in Windows?

Question

Is there a similar utility to grep available from the Windows Command Prompt, or there is third party tool for it?

Answer 1

If you install either Cygwin or Mingw, then yes.

Otherwise, not as far as I know.

Answer 2

Have fun

Answer 3

There is a command-line tool called FINDSTR that comes with all Windows NT-class operating systems (type FINDSTR /? into a Command Prompt window for more information) It doesn't support everything grep does but it might be sufficient for your needs.

Answer 4

PowerShell (included as standard on Windows 7/2008R2, optional for XP/2003/Vista/2008) which includes the select-string cmdlet for this purpose.

Answer 5

UnxUtils is a great set of Unix utilites that run on Windows. It has grep, sed, gawk, etc.

Answer 6

Bare Grep is nice if you want a GUI. Gnu grep is good for CLI

Answer 7

If you don't mind a paid-for product, PowerGREP is my personal favorite.

Answer 8

We have recently used PowerGREP for some fairly advanced bulk operations on thousands of files. Including regex searching in content of PDF files, and altering PDF documents in largescale.

Its worth the money if you want to save time from manuel labour. You can try it before you buy i think.

Answer 9

Cygwin grep and more ;)

Answer 10

Windows Grep

Answer 11

If you have to use bare Windows, then in addition to the Powershell option noted above, you can use VBScript, which has decent RegEx support.

MS also has a decent scripting area on Technet with a ton of examples for administrators.

Answer 12

I'm surprised no one has mentioned FINDSTR. I'm no grep poweruser, but findstr does what I need it to, filter files and stdin, with some primitive regex support. Ships with Windows and all that. (Edit: Well someone did mention findstr, It's late I guess)

Answer 13

GnuWin32 is worth mentioning, it provides native Win32 version of all standard linux tools, including grep, file, sed, groff, indent, etc.

And it's constantly updated when new versions of these tools are released.

Answer 14

In the windows reskit there is a utility called "qgrep". You may have it on your box already. ;-) It also comes with the "tail" command, thank god!

Answer 15

Although not technically grep nor command line, both Microsoft Visual Studio and Notepad++ have a very good Find in Files feature with full regular expression support. I find myself using them frequently even though I also have the CygWin version of grep available on the command line.

Answer 16

Just try LikeGrep java utility. It may help you in very many cases. As you wish, it can also replace some text, found in files. It garantees its work on large files (up-to 8 Gb tested)

Answer 17

As mentioned above, the gnuwin32 project has a Windows CLI version of grep.

If you want something with a graphical interface, I would recommend the (open-source) tool AstroGrep.

Answer 18

It has been a while since I've used them, but Borland (Embarcadero now) included a command line grep with their C/C++ compiler. For some time, they have made available their 5.5 version as a free download after registering.