Linux “Grep” && Windows “Findstr”

1. Filter a result

1.1 Classic example to filter a listing result.

#Linux

$ ls -ls | grep mkyong

#Windows

c:\> dir | findstr mkyong

1.2 Add ignore case, and filter the listing result with multiple strings.

#Linux – Need ‘-E’ option and Uses “|” to separate multiple search strings.

$ ls -ls | grep -iE “mkyong|music”

#Windows – Use spaces to separate multiple search strings

c:\> dir | findstr -i “mkyong music”

2. Search a File

2.1 Search matched string in a file.

#Linux

$ grep mkyong test.txt

#Windows

c:\> findstr mkyong test.txt

2.2 Counting the number of matches.

#Linux

$ grep -c mkyong test.txt

#Windows – Piped with find /c command.

c:\> findstr -N “mkyong” test.txt | find /c “:”

3. Search a list of files

3.1 Search matched string in a list of files.

#Linux

$ grep mkyong -lr /path/folder

#Windows

c:\> findstr /M mkyong c:\folder\*

* (grep) -l , (findstr) /M = print only name of files containing matches.