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Search file for string...

H

homercles337

Diamond Member
How come this is an option in the search in windows, but it only returns files with the string as part of the file name? This has irritated me for so long now. Any suggestions?
 
Works fine for me in Win2K and WinXP. I use it all the time to find specific driver INF files.

Open up the search window, file name is *.inf, word or phrase in file is "some hardware vendor". Or file is * if I want to look in all files.

However, this might only work with straight text files, or only with files windows can natively interpret, I'm not sure.
 
The gui search function *should* work just fine (I've used it many times)

If you want though, drop to command line and use the FindStr command.
 
grep? I cant be bothered with cygwin. Maybe its better now, but back in grad school that thing was a mess.

It could be that it only works on text files, but if that is the case why even have an option to search for a string in a file then? Looks like that is the problem. I wish there was an option to tell it just read files as text. Meh, maybe Vista will not disappoint on this ... (BTW, google desktop has the similar problems).

Edit, there is an option to tell windows what file type it is and this does not fix the problem.
 
Originally posted by: homercles337
grep? I cant be bothered with cygwin. Maybe its better now, but back in grad school that thing was a mess.
Click to expand...
You don't need cygwin.
It could be that it only works on text files, but if that is the case why even have an option to search for a string in a file then? Looks like that is the problem. I wish there was an option to tell it just read files as text. Meh, maybe Vista will not disappoint on this ... (BTW, google desktop has the similar problems).

Edit, there is an option to tell windows what file type it is and this does not fix the problem.
Click to expand...
I don't know exactly what it works on, but I know it doesn't just do all text files, because I've always found it useless for searching through source code.
 
Originally posted by: homercles337
grep? I cant be bothered with cygwin. Maybe its better now, but back in grad school that thing was a mess.

It could be that it only works on text files, but if that is the case why even have an option to search for a string in a file then? Looks like that is the problem. I wish there was an option to tell it just read files as text. Meh, maybe Vista will not disappoint on this ... (BTW, google desktop has the similar problems).

Edit, there is an option to tell windows what file type it is and this does not fix the problem.
Click to expand...

Works on more than text files, but not everything.

Works on word/excel I believe, stuff like that.

Grep is probably more feature rich but the built-in findstr does most of what you are after.

 
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