Unix, Linux and Macintosh users all enjoy the availability of a search tool that
is lacking in Microsoft Windows. A wonderful command line utility called Grep is
taken for granted by those users.
Grep has it’s origins in Unix and as I mentioned it is a command line utility
that does a great job of searching for text strings in files. Basically you type the word grep
followed by any text or text string you want to search for and grep returns a
list of every file containing that string.
Sample:
Grep banana
This would return a list of every file containing the word banana.
Over the years many variations of this command have emerged and features such as
listing the line numbers and or displaying the line of a file that contained the
text string have been added. Now there are options in many of the GUI based
variants that allow you to do a search and replace. This lets you search every file on a
disk or in a folder for the text string and replace it.
Now my earlier example is not very “real world” but if you think about it there
are many instances where this replace ability would come in handy. Have you ever moved? Did you need to change your address
in a lot of documents? Have you
ever noticed a typo in a web page heading that is on every page? (This was my
immediate need.) Another great use
for this tool is the ability to find something you wrote when you have forgotten
the file name. Just enter a word or
phrase that you remember from the file and let the Grep program list every file
it is in.
Many of us, jealous of this simple tool, have sought out equivalent programs for
our Windows based computers. The search in Windows has never been all that useful and compared to many of these grep and “grep like” programs
it is intolerably slow. Not to
mention the fact that it only list the file names and not where it found what
you were looking for in the file.
These grep programs usually list the line number and display the lines that it
found so you can quickly confirm that the file is the one you are looking for.
The other day I again found myself looking for a way to make the same changes to
multiple files and I once again started searching for a good grep program. I
found several right off that bat that were listed commercially. Unfortunately many of these were
listed at a cost of as much as $149.00
Determined to meet my immediate need and to look for a grep like program to use
in the future I began looking deeper for programs that were either free or low
cost. In searching for working samples I wasted a lot of time downloading trial
versions from websites only to find out that the trial was handicapped in one
way or another. I don’t mind trial versions that expire, but disabling the most
useful features really does not give a person a chance to “really” try the
software out. Realizing that my
abilities to locate usable software on the net are better than average I
determined that many people must be having an even worse time locating a decent
grep or grep like program with search and replace capabilities.
I found two that were “real” trials, had the replace capability that I needed
and the purchase price after the trial expired was reasonable. I am linking them here for you to
check out if you like.
The first one is Windows Grep by Huw
Millington
www.wingrep.com
The second program is AJC Grep offered by
AJC Software
.www.ajcsoft.com
Both programs do a good job, are fast and offer features like not modifying the
original file. They differed mostly
in style. The WindowsGrep program
presented you with easy to follow dialogue boxes asking you questions for each
step of the process. The AJCGrep program opens with an easy to follow screen containing most of the options for doing a search and or
replace.
Shown here are the opening screens from both programs with a search setup in
progress:
AJC Grep
Windows Grep
I have “played” with both programs and tested for all the criteria I was looking
for.
One experiment I conducted with both.
I had a typo in the heading of several web documents so I tested the search and
replace against the entire directory. I had each program search for GIZIZMO and replace the instances with
Gizmo. The search in each
program returned a list of 77 to 99 files out of 526 files searched. (Both
programs had options for searching text or binary files so the number of matches
differed according to the settings I specified.)
Shown here are both programs after a search:
AJC Search results
Windows Grep results
Both programs made the replace in a matter of a few seconds and both programs
had an option to write the changes to the original files or to a new file. In the case of Windows Grep, the program
wrote the changes to duplicate files with a .new extension added to the end. The
AJC Grep program had an option for saving the original with a .bak extention.
Both programs offered several additional features such as saving the search
criteria for later use and printing out the results of a search or saving it to
a file.
Another reason you should probably look at these two programs is that both had
decent help files and I used the contact information posted on both websites and
got responses almost immediately.
Well there you have it. Check them out
and happy
greping!
