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Tag: grep

  • dnGREP: Content Search And Replace For Windows

    dnGREP: Content Search And Replace For Windows

    dnGREP

    In an earlier review  for FileSearchy commenter smaragdus wondered out loud if there are any utilities that support searching in epub (and fb2) files. Indeed the search for such a tool seems to confirm that it is a rare feature. I stumbled upon dnGREP, however.

    dnGREP searches inside most text files and some like pdf  require a plugin which come with the program and reside in the program’s folder. It integrates with the right click menu, can search plain text, Word documents, inside archives and more. It wasn’t clear at first if the latter includes epub files, then I found a support question or feature request that was answered:

    You can enable this by modifying C:\Program Files\dnGREP\Plugins\dnGREP.Engines.Archive.plugin file.
    Just add epub to the list of extensions.

    The result can be seen in the screenshot above. dnGREP provides a a preview and highlights results, supports regular expressions and xpath. The user can also filter the search (icon to the far right of the Search in section) to restrict the search to specific path or type of files. Replace is supported and the >> button to the right of the Replace button provides custom actions such as Copy files, Move files, Delete files and File names to clipboard, Save as CSV and CSV to clipboard to copy the result file names for use elsewhere. The bookmark saves search queries for the future.

    The program’s options includes such settings as Show file path in results, Show results tree expanded and Show result lines in context X before and X after.

    Version 2.7.1 beta 2 used for this review, version 2.6.3 stable is also available for both 32 and 64 bit systems. Unfortunately, because it is usually better but difficult to avoid, dnGREP requires the .NET framework 4.0. dnGREP can be launched via the command line.

  • AstroGrep, Open Source Search

    AstroGrep, Open Source Search

    AstroGrep is a simple search tool. It searches within files for matching text. The program supports regular expressions to search for near matches, it also supports searching within one of several files types only and has options to match whole words and within subfolders. It presents a preview of the line containing the match with the option to show line numbers and also a configurable number of lines above and below where the match is located. The Negation option reverses the search where the results are files that don’t have a match in them. AstroGrep also remembers recent paths and search queries.

    AstroGrep

    Program’s options (Tools menus) include file type exclusion and specifying an external text editor (default is Notepad) that will open when double clicking on a search result. A ‘plugin’ section enables searching within Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx) files.

    AstroGrep is open source, requires Windows XP, Vista or 7 and .Net Framework v3.5 SP1.

  • Windows Grep Text Search And Replace

    Windows Grep Text Search And Replace

    Windows Grep is described by its author as

    Windows Grep is a tool for searching files for text strings that you specify. Although Windows and many other programs have file searching capabilities built-in, none can match the power and versatility of Windows Grep.

    Windows Grep is more or less a GUI (Graphical User Interface) for the grep command line utility. In addition to searching for text it also supports replacing of text.

    Searches can be performed using either the beginner or expert mode, with the former providing a wizard. The wizard is basically a step by step version of the expert mode that does not necessarily make the searching task easier and in reality only offers less options.

    File formats supported include plain (source code, batch files, etc.) and binary (EXE, DLL, etc.). It is possible to perform searches based on the size and the date of the files in question and also use regular expressions in the search. Search results can also be saved and printed. Additionally Windows Grep can search inside ZIP archives thus making it handy for searching backups for example.

    One of the strengths of Windows Grep is the way search results are displayed. The user can control the number of lines displayed around either side of the matching text, whether to include whole lines and some others. (see image below). Worth a mention is the support for searching delimited (text separated by a constant character such as a comma) and fixed length text file formats.

    windowsgrep

    Windows Grep runs on Windows 98, 2000, XP and Vista  and is a non-expiring and non-crippled shareware. It prompts for registration at program exit.