JSI Tip 0321 - String search from the command line or in a batch file.

Windows NT supports findstr which searches files for literal strings or regular expressions.

findstr [/b] [/e] [/l] [/c:string] [/r] [/s] [/i] [/x] [/v] [/n] [/m] [/o] [/g:file] [/f:file] strings files

Use spaces to separate multiple search strings unless the argument is prefixed with /c. Example:

findstr "Windows NT" document.txtsearches for "Windows" or "NT" in file document.txt.

findstr /c:"Windows NT" document.txtsearches for "Windows NT" in file document.txt.

Regular expressions are a notation for specifying patterns, as opposed to exact strings. Characters that do not have special meaning are considered literal character and match an occurance of that character. Letters and numbers are literal characters. A metacharacter is a symbol with special meaning (an operator or delimiter) in the regular-expression syntax:

Examples:

To find all occurance of a string begining with W and ending with ws: findstr "W.*ws" document.txt

To find all occurances of Windows: findstr Windows document.txt

To find all occurances of Windows in c:WinNT and its' sub-directories, ignoring case: findstr /s /i Windows c:WinNT*.*

To find several strings in a list of files: findstr /g:argument.txt /f:files.txt

To list every file on the C: drive that contains the word JSI: findstr /s /m "" C:*.*

Related:How to Add a New Line in a PowerShell String

To find every file in the current directory that contains a word that starts with Win: findstr /m "