Grep equivalent for Windows (String Parsing)
The built in windows command FindStr mirrors the capabilities of the Unix command Grep.
Findstr /?
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.
Example of using Findstr to search for multiple strings in succession within a log file.
findstr “ERROR Caused Fail” c:logslog.log
This command will search for the String ERROR then Caused, and Fail while parsing down a file. So if the file looked like this:
Line1: Error Script Failed
Line2: test1
Line4: Caused by process down
Line5: test2
Line6: Error2
The FindStr output would look like this:
Error Script Failed
Caused by Process down
Error2
