What are good grep tools for Windows? [closed]

Question

Any recommendations on grep tools for Windows? Ideally ones that could leverage 64-bit OS.

I'm aware of Cygwin, of course, and have also found PowerGREP, but I'm wondering if there are any hidden gems out there?

Answer 1

If you want a simple to use Windows Grep tool, I created one called P-Grep that I have made available for free download from my website: www.adjutantit.com - home menu, downloads.

Windows Grep seemed to have problems with a large number of files, so I wrote my own - which seems more reliable. You can select a folder, right click and send it to P-Grep. The sendto folder gets unpdated during installation.

Answer 2

GrepWin Free and open source (GPL)

I've been using grepWin which was written by one of the tortoisesvn guys. Does the job on Windows...

http://stefanstools.sourceforge.net/grepWin.html

Answer 3

I always use WinGREP, but I've had issues with it not letting go of files.

Answer 4

I used Borland's grep for years but just found a pattern that it won't match. Eeeks. What else hasn't it found over the years? I wrote a simple text search replacement that does recursion like grep - it's FS.EXE on source forge.

grep fails...

C:\DEV>GREP GAAPRNTR \SOURCE\TPALIB\*.PRG
<no results>

windows findstr works...

C:\DEV>FINDSTR GAAPRNTR \SOURCE\TPALIB\*.PRG
\SOURCE\TPALIB\TPGAAUPD.PRG:ffSPOOL(cRPTFILE, MEM->GAAPRNTR, MEM->NETTYPE)
\SOURCE\TPALIB\TPPRINTR.PRG:    AADD(mPRINTER,   TPACONFG->GAAPRNTR)
\SOURCE\TPALIB\TPPRINTR.PRG:               IF TRIM(TPACONFG->GAAPRNTR) <> TRIM(mPRINTER[2])
\SOURCE\TPALIB\TPPRINTR.PRG:                   REPLACE TPACONFG->GAAPRNTR WITH mPRINTER[2]

Answer 5

It's been a couple of years since you asked the question, but I'd recommend AstroGrep (http://astrogrep.sourceforge.net).

It's free, open source, and has a simple interface. I use it to search code all the time.

Answer 6

I have successfully used GNU utilities for Win32 for quite some time and it has a good grep as well as tail and other handy gnu utils for win32. I avoid the packaged shell and simply use the executables right in win32 command prompt.

The Tail that is packaged is quite a good little application as well.