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What are the best grep implementations for Windows?
10
Options
Considered
288
User
Recs.
Feb 6, 2024
Last
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10
Options
Considered
Best grep implementations for Windows
Price
System resource usage
Platforms
78
dnGrep
Free
Low
-
61
PowerGREP
Paid
-
-
--
AstroGrep
Free
-
-
--
GrepWin
Free
-
Windows
--
Voidtools Everything
-
-
Windows
See Full List
78
dnGrep
My Rec
ommendation
for
dnGrep
My Recommendation for
dnGrep
All
12
Experiences
1
Pros
7
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Supports advanced search options
dnGrep has some advanced search options such as phonetic searches and xpath.
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Top
Con
•••
No command-line support
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PleasantNehmetawy's Experience
This works very well, has all desirable options available.
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Specs
System resource usage:
Low
Top
Pro
•••
Preview results in context
It shows the found strings within the line, and with the surrounding lines.
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Top
Con
•••
Doesn't have column sorting by path/filesize/last-modified
The search results pane prepends file paths to results and doesn't feature file size or last-modified dates, sorting is only possible alphabetically.
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Top
Pro
•••
Supports themes
Light and Dark Theme available by default.
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Top
Con
•••
Configuring can take some time
Configuring how the application works may take some time. Though this is only initially since the configuration is kept throughout later sessions.
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Top
Pro
•••
Replace matching text along with search
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Top
Pro
•••
See results without opening files
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Top
Pro
•••
Supports search in PDFs, words or archives
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Top
Pro
•••
Available in the right click menu
You can search inside folders by right clicking on them and choosing to search with dnGrep.
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Free
Recommend
80
61
PowerGREP
My Rec
ommendation
for
PowerGREP
My Recommendation for
PowerGREP
All
9
Experiences
2
Pros
5
Cons
2
Top
Pro
•••
Price is reasonable for such a powerful tool.
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Top
Con
•••
Paid
PowerGREP is not free and costs at least 119 EUROS for a single license.
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ModestItzpapalotl's Experience
I use PowerGREP for searching hundreds of log files and source code files.
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Top
Pro
•••
Easy to use GUI
PowerGREP has a very easy to use GUI, with a great preview mode that allows you to be sure on what you are replacing.
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Top
Con
•••
Complicated to use GUI, not intuitive to use
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InterestingMaahes's Experience
awful, too complex, just wanted to duplicate Linux grep. for this it did not work
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Top
Pro
•••
Accessible from the right-click menu
You can easily search inside folders by right clicking them.
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Top
Pro
•••
Powerful data collection features
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Top
Pro
•••
Supports ZIP files
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Hide
See All
Paid
Recommend
62
5
--
AstroGrep
My Rec
ommendation
for
AstroGrep
My Recommendation for
AstroGrep
All
9
Pros
8
Cons
1
Top
Pro
•••
Very fast
AstroGrep is very fast, it works great and runs searches smoothly even on HDD, with the difference in speed between the former and SDD not very noticeable.
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Top
Con
•••
Cannot search in PDF
Does not support searching in PDF files.
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Top
Pro
•••
Can search within word documents
Comes with a plugin to search within word documents.
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Top
Pro
•••
Allows adding exclusions for files and folders
Exclusions are flexible from file extensions to folder names or paths.
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Top
Pro
•••
Can be configured to load text editor on specific line and column
This works double-clicking on the file results or in the preview section. For Notepad++: Command line: -n%2 -c%3 %1 Use quotes around file: checked
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Top
Pro
•••
Shows more than the line search
AstroGrep can show more than just the line search, for example the --context=NUM of a command-line GREP.
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Top
Pro
•••
Small .exe
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Top
Pro
•••
Supports exporting results
You can export the results from a search into a text file.
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Top
Pro
•••
Portable
Can be zipped and uploaded to a USB and then unzipped when needed.
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Hide
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Free
Recommend
28
10
--
GrepWin
My Rec
ommendation
for
GrepWin
My Recommendation for
GrepWin
All
9
Experiences
2
Pros
4
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Free and open source
GrepWin is completely free and open source. It's released under GPL.
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Top
Con
•••
Can only search .txt files
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Louis Klauder's Experience
All the functions I need. Easy to use
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows
Technology:
C++
Top
Pro
•••
RegEx support
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Top
Con
•••
No way to export the results
If one wishes to export the results from grep into a text file or any other format, there's no way to do it with GrepWin.
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EncouragingEndymion's Experience
Decent UI grep, has .ini, portable, straight (no .NET dependencies). The only little quibble is that you have to invoke it with /portable or a long name to get the local .ini (could have just checked the name and used it if found) which makes it clumsy on a USB drive. For the folks complaining that this or that "grep" "can't search PDF-s" - no one can. PDF-s are compressed part-wise => you need substantial code to unpack, then parse and then either, convert to text and stream it through a grep engine or write a PDF crawler. Pay $160 for PowerGREP :-) if you really, really "need" that (you don't, you are just greedy).
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Top
Pro
•••
Portable Version
A portable version without installation is available.
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Top
Pro
•••
Can search hidden directories/files
GrepWin can also search for hidden directories or files with no problem.
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Hide
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Free
Recommend
24
11
--
Voidtools Everything
My Rec
ommendation
for
Voidtools Everything
My Recommendation for
Voidtools Everything
All
9
Pros
7
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Con
•••
While it can do some limited content search, its strength is not there
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Top
Pro
•••
Minimal resource usage
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows
License:
Proprietary
Extra:
https://github.com/srwi/EverythingToolbar
Top
Pro
•••
Clean and simple user interface
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Top
Pro
•••
Quick file indexing
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Quick searching
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Share files with others easily
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Real-time updating
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Small installation file
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Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
4
1
--
GNU grep
My Rec
ommendation
for
GNU grep
My Recommendation for
GNU grep
All
3
Pros
2
Cons
1
Top
Pro
•••
Great for people used to *NIX systems
Since it's pretty much the same grep used on UNIX systems, people who have used grep on any *NIX system will find themselves at home with the Windows version.
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Top
Con
•••
Cannot handle files
When searching through files with 10MB or more it starts having issues and even crashes depending on the file size and the machine it's running on.
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Top
Pro
•••
It handles files of any size
At least in Linux.
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Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
14
1
--
TextCrawler
My Rec
ommendation
for
TextCrawler
My Recommendation for
TextCrawler
All
1
Experiences
1
EncouragingEndymion's Experience
wants to "install" (== parks trash for no reason), wants money (extra motive to park trash), .NET based (== just calls the lib from .NET - can do that on my own in 10 lines or in 1 from PowerShell) => this is a bloatware with fishy intentions
See More
Hide
Get it
here
Recommend
8
1
--
BareGrep
My Rec
ommendation
for
BareGrep
My Recommendation for
BareGrep
All
2
Pros
1
Cons
1
Top
Pro
•••
Can save search patterns
With BareGrep you can save any search patterns that you use frequently.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Cannot filter the log
BareGrep cannot filter out the irrelevant lines from the log (they are simply colored in a different color).
See More
Hide
Get it
here
Recommend
7
--
Windows Grep
My Rec
ommendation
for
Windows Grep
My Recommendation for
Windows Grep
All
5
Experiences
1
Pros
2
Cons
2
Top
Pro
•••
Search-and-replace support
Windows Grep has support for search-and-replace text. This is very helpful if you want to edit files en-masse.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Website does not seem to exist any more
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InquisitiveSisyphus's Experience
Used for many years--it's fast and works well
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Top
Pro
•••
Good result overview with click-support to external editor
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Top
Con
•••
Hasn't been updated in a while
Windows Grep hasn't had a new stable release in a while. The released version has Windows 7 listed as the latest version of Windows supported.
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
19
11
--
FAR - Find And Replace
My Rec
ommendation
for
FAR - Find And Replace
My Recommendation for
FAR - Find And Replace
All
1
Specs
Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
Hide
FREE
Recommend
1
1
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