Findstr |
Applies To: Windows Server 2008,Windows Vista
Searches for patterns of text in files.
For examples of how to use this command, see Examples.
Syntax
|
|
findstr [/b] [/e] [/l | /r] [/s] [/i] [/x] [/v] [/n] [/m] [/o] [/p] [/f:<File>] [/c:<String>] [/g:<File>] [/d:<DirList>] [/a:<ColorAttribute>] [/off[line]] <Strings> [<Drive>:][<Path>]<FileName>[ ...] |
|
Parameters
Parameter |
Description |
/b |
Matches the text pattern if it is at the beginning of a line. |
/e |
Matches the text pattern if it is at the end of a line. |
/l |
Processes search strings literally. |
/r |
Processes search strings as regular expressions. This is the default setting. |
/s |
Searches the current directory and all subdirectories. |
/i |
Ignores the case of the characters when searching for the string. |
/x |
Prints lines that match exactly. |
/v |
Prints only lines that do not contain a match. |
/n |
Prints the line number of each line that matches. |
/m |
Prints only the file name if a file contains a match. |
/o |
Prints character offset before each matching line. |
/p |
Skips files with non-printable characters. |
/off[line] |
Does not skip files that have the offline attribute set. |
/f:<File> |
Gets a file list from the specified file. |
/c:<String> |
Uses the specified text as a literal search string. |
/g:<File> |
Gets search strings from the specified file. |
/d:<DirList> |
Searches the specified list of directories. Each directory must be separated with a semicolon (;), for example dir1;dir2;dir3. |
/a:<ColorAttribute> |
Specifies color attributes with two hexadecimal digits. Type color /? for additional information. |
<Strings> |
Specifies the text to search for in FileName. Required. |
[<Drive>:][<Path>]<FileName>[ ...] |
Specifies the location and file or files to search. At least one file name is required. |
/? |
Displays Help at the command prompt. |
Remarks
- All findstr command-line options must precede Strings and FileName in the command string.
- Regular expressions use both literal characters and metacharacters to find patterns of text, rather than exact strings of characters. A literal character is a character that does not have a special meaning in the regular-expression syntax—it matches an occurrence of that character. For example, letters and numbers are literal characters. A metacharacter is a symbol with special meaning (an operator or delimiter) in the regular-expression syntax.
The following table lists the metacharacters that findstr accepts.
Metacharacter |
Value |
. |
Wildcard: any character |
* |
Repeat: zero or more occurrences of the previous character or class |
^ |
Line position: beginning of the line |
$ |
Line position: end of the line |
[class] |
Character class: any one character in a set |
[^class] |
Inverse class: any one character not in a set |
[x-y] |
Range: any characters within the specified range |
\x |
Escape: literal use of a metacharacter x |
\<string |
Word position: beginning of the word |
string\> |
Word position: end of the word |
The special characters in regular expression syntax have the most power when you use them together. For example, use the following combination of the wildcard character (.) and repeat (*) character to match any string of characters:
|
|
.* |
|
Use the following expression as part of a larger expression to match any string beginning with "b" and ending with "ing":
|
|
b.*ing |
|
Examples
Use spaces to separate multiple search strings unless the argument is prefixed with /c.
To search for "hello" or "there" in file x.y, type:
|
|
findstr "hello there" x.y |
|
To search for "hello there" in file x.y, type:
|
|
findstr /c:"hello there" x.y |
|
To find all occurrences of the word "Windows" (with an initial capital letter W) in the file Proposal.txt, type:
|
|
findstr Windows proposal.txt |
|
To search every file in the current directory and all subdirectories that contained the word Windows, regardless of the letter case, type:
|
|
findstr /s /i Windows *.* |
|
To find all occurrences of lines that begin with "FOR" and are preceded by zero or more spaces (as in a computer program loop), and to display the line number where each occurrence is found, type:
|
|
findstr /b /n /r /c:"^ *FOR" *.bas |
|
To search for multiple strings in a set of files, create a text file that contains each search criterion on a separate line. You can also list the exact files that you want to search in a text file. For example, to use the search criteria in the file Stringlist.txt, search the files listed in Filelist.txt, and then store the results in the file Results.out, type:
|
|
findstr /g:stringlist.txt /f:filelist.txt > results.out |
|
To list every file containing the word "computer" within the current directory and all subdirectories, regardless of case, type:
|
|
findstr /s /i /m "\<computer\>" *.* |
|
To list every file containing the word "computer" and any other words that begin with "comp", (such as "compliment" and "compete"), type:
|
|
findstr /s /i /m "\<comp.*" *.* |
|
