When comparing GrepWin vs AstroGrep, the Slant community recommends AstroGrep for most people. In the question“What are the best grep implementations for Windows?” AstroGrep is ranked 3rd while GrepWin is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose AstroGrep is:
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.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Free and open source
GrepWin is completely free and open source. It's released under GPL.
Pro RegEx support
Pro Portable Version
A portable version without installation is available.
Pro Can search hidden directories/files
GrepWin can also search for hidden directories or files with no problem.
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.
Pro Can search within word documents
Comes with a plugin to search within word documents.
Pro Allows adding exclusions for files and folders
Exclusions are flexible from file extensions to folder names or paths.
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
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.
Pro Small .exe
Pro Supports exporting results
You can export the results from a search into a text file.
Pro Portable
Can be zipped and uploaded to a USB and then unzipped when needed.
Cons
Con Can only search .txt files
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.
Con Cannot search in PDF
Does not support searching in PDF files.