Is there any way to use UNIX GREP commands on WIndows operating system

Question

All,

I need some command like GREP in UNIX for WINDOWS Operating system, If there any way to use grep or any equivalent command in Windows?

Please help

Answer 1

Some options:

• Grep for Windows - light-weight option
• GNU utilities for Win32 - native ports
• Cygwin - the heaviest option. Includes GNU libraries & shells. It's possible to extract and hand-install the binary you want and the files it requires, but it's messy.

Answer 2

You could try Cygwin, it's a full collection of command line tools that are common on unix systems.

Answer 3

One way is to install Cygwin. Cygwin uses a dll that simulates POSIX behaviour.

There are a couple of native projects for Unix tools: GnuWin32 and UnxUtils.

Answer 4

Install Cygwin. It's a unix emulator and will let you use regex on windows.

Answer 5

Cygwin is good if you want the entire set of UNIX tools (compiler, X servers, everything). The Cygwin DLL actually gives you a full-blown UNIX environment, command line tools, GUI stuff and programming environment so you can easily port UNIX software to Windows.

I prefer GnuWin32 (GNU for Windows) myself since I can just add what I need. It comes in packages so you don't have to install the lot. They're also compiled natively for Windows without requiring the Cygwin DLL.

For example, I had a situation recently where I just needed awk on a particular box for some quick and dirty text file manipulation. I balked at having to install the entire Cygwin environment and GnuWin32 was a lot easier (and quicker).

In terms of grep, you may also be interested to know that the Windows findstr is a bit more powerful than days of yore - it can do regular expressions as well nowadays. It's still not even a pimple on the rear end of my beloved UNIX toolchain :-) but it may be a viable option depending on your needs:

C:\Documents and Settings\Pax> 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

For full information on FINDSTR regular expressions refer to the online Command
Reference.

Answer 6

This software has worked well for me in the past: The Berkeley Utilities

Answer 7

MSYS is another (lightweight) option.

Answer 8

if you do not have grep on windows, fret not. you can use findstr like one of them mentioned, or just do some vbscript programming.

example of searching for a pattern: (equivalent to grep "word" file)

Set objFS = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
strFile= "C:\test\file"
Set objFile = objFS.OpenTextFile(strFile,1)
Do Until objFile.AtEndOfStream 
    strLine = objFile.ReadLine
    If InStr(strLine,"word")> 0 then
             Wscript.Echo "Found word: " & strLine
        End If
Loop

Of course, if you can afford the luxury of downloading stuff to your environment, use the GNU grep (and others). They can make your batch scripting experience easier.