Find-String

Find-String is a PowerShell script whose purpose is to emulate grep and/or ack. PowerShell already has the built-in Select-String cmdlet, but this script wraps Select-String and provides match highlighting on top of the searching capabilities.

It currently highlights matches in a similar style to ack.

Examples

Find all usages of form in all .cs files:

find-string form *.cs

Find the unique file extensions from all of the files that have the string 'jquery' in them:

find-string jquery -passThru |
    Select-Object -ExpandProperty Path |
    Select-String '.\.(\w+)$' |
    Select-Object -ExpandProperty Matches |
    ForEach-Object { $_.Groups[1].Value } |
    Select-Object -Unique

Or the same example using built-in aliases (more succinct, likely reflects more typical usage):

find-string jquery -pass |
    select -expand path |
    select-string '.\.(\w+)$' |
    select -expand matches |
    %{ $_.groups[1].value } |
    select -uniq

Installation

PowerShell Gallery Install

This method of installation requires PowerShell v5 or higher.

• Run Install-Module Find-String

See Find-String on PowerShell Gallery.

PsGet Install

• Install PsGet
• Run Install-Module Find-String

See Find-String on PsGet for more details.

Manual Install

Clone (or download) the repository to:

• If PowerShell 5
  • ~/Documents/WindowsPowerShell/Modules/Find-String
• If PowerShell Core on Windows
  • ~/Documents/PowerShell/Modules/Find-String
• If Mac/Linux
  • ~/.local/share/powershell/Modules/Find-String

Alternative Tools

I like options, so I want to ensure everyone is aware of the other tools out there. My current preferred tool is RipGrep.

• Grep - "Grep searches one or more input files for lines containing a match to a specified pattern."
• Ack - "ack is a code-searching tool, similar to grep but optimized for programmers searching large trees of source code."
• The Silver Searcher (aka AG) - "A code-searching tool similar to ack, but faster."
• The Platinum Searcher (aka PT) - "A code search tool similar to ack and the_silver_searcher(ag). It supports multi platforms and multi encodings."
• RipGrep (aka RG) - "ripgrep recursively searches directories for a regex pattern"

Editor Integration

Vim

See find-string.vim. Installation should be a simple Plug 'drmohundro/find-string.vim' if you use vim-plug.

Options

• -pattern
  • Specifies the text to find. Type a string or regular expression.
  • Required
• -filter
  • Specifies the file types to search in. The default is all file types (*.*).
• -include
  • Specifies the file types to search in. This allows you to search across multiple file types (i.e. *.ps1,*.psm1).
• -excludeFiles
  • Specifies the file types to exclude from searches. If set, this overrides any global defaults or configuration.
  • Comma-separated list of files to exclude from the search
• -excludeDirectories
  • Specifies the directories to exclude from searches. It really only makes sense for recursive searches. If set, this overrides any global defaults or configuration.
  • Comma-separated list of directories to exclude from the search
• -path
  • Specifies the path to the files to be searched. Wildcards are permitted. The default location is the local directory.
• -recurse
  • Gets the items in the specified path and in all child directies. This is the default.
• -caseSensitive
  • Makes matches case-sensitive. By default, matches are not case-sensitive.
• -context
  • Captures the specified number of lines before and after the line with the match. This allows you to view the match in context.
  • Example:
    • find-string foo *.cs -context 2,3
    • Would return a context of 2 lines before the match and 3 lines after the match
• -passThru
  • Passes the literal MatchInfo object representing the found match to the pipeline. By default, this cmdlet does not send anything through the object pipeline.
  • This is useful if you wish to do additional processing on the results, such as collect any matches in a regular expression that you searched for or to gather unique results.
• -pipeOutput
  • Sends all output along the object pipeline. By default, this command uses color to help with readability; however, this prevents the output from being piped to another command. If you wish to pipe the output of this command to something else, be sure to use this parameter.
  • This is useful if you wish to pipe the output to the clipboard.
  • Example:
    • find-string foo *.cs -pipeOutput | clip
• -listMatchesOnly
  • Returns all files that have matches existing in them, but doesn't display any of the matches themselves.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG for a list of all changes and their corresponding versions.

License

Find-String is released under the MIT license. See LICENSE for details.