When comparing GrepWin vs Windows Grep, the Slant community recommends GrepWin for most people. In the question“What are the best grep implementations for Windows?” GrepWin is ranked 4th while Windows Grep is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose GrepWin is:
GrepWin is completely free and open source. It's released under GPL.
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 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.
Pro Good result overview with click-support to external editor
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 Website does not seem to exist any more
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.