Searches for patterns of text in files.

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

Remarks

• Allfindstr command-line options must precedestrings andfilename in the command string.

• Regular expressions use both literal characters and meta-characters to find patterns of text, rather than exact strings of characters.

  • A literal character is a character that doesn't have a special meaning in the regular-expression syntax; instead, it matches an occurrence of that character. For example, letters and numbers are literal characters.

  • A meta-character is a symbol with special meaning (an operator or delimiter) in the regular-expression syntax.

    The accepted meta-characters are:

    Meta-character	Value
    .	Wildcard - Any character
    *	Repeat - Zero or more occurrences of the previous character or class.
    ^	Beginning line position - Beginning of the line.
    $	Ending 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 meta-character.
    \<string	Beginning word position - Beginning of the word.
    string\>	Ending 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 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 withb and ending withing:b.*ing

• To search for multiple strings in a set of files, you must create a text file that contains each search criterion on a separate line.

• Use spaces to separate multiple search strings unless the argument is prefixed with/c.

Examples

To search forhello orthere in filex.y, type:

findstr hello there x.y

To search forhello there in filex.y, type:

findstr /c:"hello there" x.y

To find all occurrences of the wordWindows (with an initial capital letter W) in the fileproposal.txt, type:

findstr Windows proposal.txt

To search every file in the current directory and all subdirectories that contained the wordWindows, regardless of the letter case, type:

findstr /s /i Windows *.*

To find all occurrences of lines that begin withFOR 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 list the exact files that you want to search in a text file, use the search criteria in the filestringlist.txt, to search the files listed infilelist.txt, and then to store the results in the fileresults.out, type:

findstr /g:stringlist.txt /f:filelist.txt > results.out

To list every file containing the wordcomputer 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.* *.*

Related links

• Command-Line Syntax Key