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Windows Grep

 

Windows Grep is a great utility for programmers working with thousands of files and searching for a text string or regular expression recursively. It is an evaluation version but does not time-expire.

Shows an extra screen while exiting but didn't matter much to me because of the utility factor. Also use Expert View for many options. Tweak it from Options->Preferences.

Download link: http://www.wingrep.com/download.htm

Version 2.3 runs on Windows 98, 2000, XP and Vista.

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by Anonymous on 11. May 2009 - 17:21  (21376)

About a year ago I made my research for file search utilities. I need to search for a text (regex is a must have) string inside a text file. My criteria for the tool was to:
- search fast;
- give reliable results;
- be free;
- not to use file indexing.

The best tool then was Windows Grep 2.3.0.2269 - it met all criteria and have one unique option: skip the directories of source control clients (I'm a developer and I rarely need to search in CVS/SVN service directories). This tool, though, had its problems - it was not updated for more than a year, it crashed when scan many files or found many results just because the counter variables was not huge enough to take the number, and the developer was totally unresponsive (probably only for the free version). The first two problems were fixed in the last build (2.3.0.2403).

Now I'm using more often the AstroGrep. At the time of test its version (2.0.38) was pretty slow, but the current version (4.1.4) is fast enough to compete the Windows Grep.

For the rest of the tools I can say nothing good: some of them (GNU Grep for Windows, BareGrep) are pretty old and have no recent updates, others are too slow (I need to search as fast as possible into >10K files in >1K directories), third are unreliable (I can't remember the exact tool, but I observed that one of the fastest tools then just ... missed about the half of the results), and fourth (AgentRansack, Archivarius, Google Search, ...) are just inappropriate (mostly because they use file indexing).

Unfortunately I have no time to test the newest versions of the tools, so I stick to the two above.

Thanks to post #2! I'll check the dnGREP.

For the curious here is the list of "pretenders" (If someone is interested I'll give the URLs and the tested versions):
AF9
Agent Ransack
AGrep
Archivarius
AstroGrep
BareGrep
Blinkx
Copernic
dtSearch
DVYGUN
Effective File Search
FileLocator
Find it
FindFiles
glark
GNU Grep for Windows
Google
greppy
grepWin
Harddisk Search & Stats
Jacson
LightningSearch
Locate
PowerGrep
ReplaceEm
SC-Replace
Serp
Sgrep
Shell.NET
Simple Search-Replace
Sleuthhound
Super Text Search
Turbo Searcher
vGrep
Windows Grep

by Anonymous on 12. May 2009 - 7:53  (21409)

Here is a short test of the short list ;-)
I run some tests in a directory with 6350 sub-directories and total of 41531 files. The files spectrum is: text files, archives (.ZIP, etc), MS Office documents:
1. A text (NOT regex) case insensitive search of all files;
2. The previous test but checked options to skip binary files and special directories with the tools where these options are available;
3. Test 1 but as regex (the search string contains no regex "wildcards").
Here are the results (the information is delivered as is reported by the corresponding tool):
Windows Grep 2.3.0.2403:
1. 1666 matches in 409 files. 41453 files searched, 0 files skipped. 1283068.30 Kb searched in 5m 38s (3796.06 K/s);
2. 1212 matches in 301 files. 31837 files searched, 9616 files skipped. 739334.35 Kb searched in 2m 29s (4961.98 K/s). Checked options "Skip binary files" and "Skip _vti*";
3. 1666 matches in 409 files. 41453 files searched, 0 files skipped. 1283068.30 Kb searched in 6m 22s (3358.82 K/s);
Notes:
- The CPU load during the searches is about 50%;
- Throw error (dialog window) "Out of resources" during test 2;
- Results view is only available after the search is finished;
- Shows the results in context and highlights the match.

AstroGrep 4.1.4:
1. 1342 matches (counted by hand) in 405 files (counted by hand) for 2m 44s (measured by hand) and reported errors in 192 files (consider them "skipped");
2. N/A - the tool has no appropriate options;
3. 1342 matches (counted by hand) in 405 files (counted by hand) for 7m 40s (measured by hand) and reported errors in 192 files (consider them "skipped");
Notes:
- The CPU load during the searches is about 50%;
- Results view is available during the search run;
- Has option to save the results to a file;
- Shows the results in context and highlights the match.

grepWin 1.3.3.224:
1. Searched 41295 files, skipped 1 files. Found 1621 matches in 405 files. (The search took 3m 06s - measured by hand);
2. Searched 41295 files, skipped 1 files. Found 1170 matches in 299 files. (The search took 3m 07s - measured by hand). Unchecked option "Include binary files";
3. Searched 41295 files, skipped 1 files. Found 1621 matches in 405 files. (The search took 3m 07s - measured by hand);
Notes:
- The CPU load during the searches is about 50%;
- Selected option "All files" as the default is "[File] Size is less than 2000 KB"

dnGREP:
1. 405 files found in 117387.6198ms (1m 57s);
2. N/A - the tool has no appropriate options;
3. 10 files found in 120293.7954ms (2m 0s).
Notes:
- The CPU load during the searches is about 100%;
- Doesn't report the number of matches in each file;
- Doesn't report the file's directory;
- Displays only the matching without searched string highlight;
- Offers the unique option of regex match on multiple lines
- The "Case sensitive" option is disabled when the "Regular Expression" option is selected - it seems that the regex should include the corresponding option but, unfortunately, I couldn't manage to do it as the documentation is grabbed from a different source and is not adapted to the tool.

by Anonymous on 25. September 2009 - 16:19  (33310)

Thank you for the great feedback. I've updated dnGREP and have addressed some of the issues you've listed:
* Doesn't report the number of matches in each file (implemented)
* Doesn't report the file's directory (implemented)
* Displays only the matching without searched string highlight (whenever the search is shown in context of other lines the matched line is highlighted, however I couldn't find a way to highlight just one word in standard tree control)
* The "Case sensitive" option is disabled when the "Regular Expression" option is selected (implemented)

I've also added a few extra things such as XPath search (ability to search XML files using XPath), shell actions (ability to copy, move, or delete files found), as well as a CSV report of all matches.

by Anonymous on 4. March 2009 - 14:38  (17195)

Baregrep and Astrogrep have the same problem: they will output the whole line only, and there's no option to output only match like Wingrep does. I wish there was a free portable utility that did this... Wingrep also saves lots of garbaje into registry and regex support is far from perfect. But it is the best I have found so far...

by Anonymous on 23. December 2008 - 14:45  (12336)

There is a new .NET based open source GREP tool for windows called dnGREP: http://code.google.com/p/dngrep/
It provides shell integration (ability to search from explorer), plain text/regex search, undo functionality, and optional integration with text editor (like notepad++).

by Anupam on 1. December 2008 - 18:11  (11279)

AstroGrep is there too.
http://astrogrep.sourceforge.net/

Anupam Shriwatri, India

by mikedutch (not verified) on 1. December 2008 - 14:26  (11272)

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