Windows recursive grep command-line

I need to do a recursive grep in Windows, something like this in Unix/Linux:

grep -i 'string' `find . -print` 

or the more-preferred method:

find . -print | xargs grep -i 'string' 

I'm stuck with just cmd.exe, so I only have Windows built-in commands. I can't install Cygwin, or any 3rd party tools like UnxUtils on this server unfortunately. I'm not even sure I can install PowerShell. Any suggestions using only cmd.exe built-ins (Windows 2003 Server)?

8 Answers

findstr can do recursive searches (/S) and supports some variant of regex syntax (/R).

C:\>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 occurrences 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. 

findstr /spin /c:"string" [files] 

The parameters have the following meanings:

• s = recursive
• p = skip non-printable characters
• i = case insensitive
• n = print line numbers

And the string to search for is the bit you put in quotes after /c:

I just searched a text with following command which listed me all the file names containing my specified 'search text'.

C:\Users\ak47\Desktop\trunk>findstr /S /I /M /C:"search text" *.* 

Recursive search for import word inside src folder:

> findstr /s import .\src\* 

I recommend a really great tool:

native unix utils:

Just unpack them and put that folder into your PATH environment variable and voila! :)

Works like a charm, and there are much more then just grep ;)

for /f %G in ('dir *.cpp *.h /s/b') do ( find /i "what you search" "%G") >> out_file.txt 

Select-String worked best for me. All the other options listed here, such as findstr, didn't work with large files.

Here's an example:

select-string -pattern "<pattern>" -path "<path>" 

note: This requires Powershell

If you have Perl installed, you could use ack, available at .