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.
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 { $_.Groups[1].Value } |
Select-Object -Unique
Or the same example using built-in aliases (more succinct, likely reflects more typical usage):
find-string jquery -pass |
select -expand path |
grep '.\.(\w+)$' |
select -expand matches |
%{ $_.groups[1].value } |
select -uniq
Find-String has PsGet support - once you have PsGet
installed, all you have to do is run Install-Module Find-String and the
Find-String command is ready for you.
NAME
c:\MyScriptDir\Find-String.ps1
SYNOPSIS
Searches text files by pattern and displays the results.
SYNTAX
Find-String [-pattern] <Regex> [-filter] <String> [-path <String[]>]
[-recurse] [-caseSensitive] [-context <Int32[]>] [-passThru] [-pipeOutput]
[<CommonParameters>]
Find-String [-pattern] <Regex> [-include] <String[]> [-path<String[]>]
[-recurse] [-caseSensitive] [-context <Int32[]>] [-passThru] [-pipeOutput]
[<CommonParameters>]
DESCRIPTION
Searches text files by pattern and displays the results.
PARAMETERS
-pattern <Regex>
Specifies the text to find. Type a string or regular expression.
Required? true
Position? 1
Default value
Accept pipeline input? false
Accept wildcard characters?
-filter <String>
Specifies the file types to search in. The default is all file types (*.*).
Required? true
Position? 2
Default value
Accept pipeline input? false
Accept wildcard characters?
-include <String[]>
Specifies the file types to search in. This allows you to search across multiple file types (i.e. *.
ps1,*.psm1).
Required? true
Position? 2
Default value
Accept pipeline input? false
Accept wildcard characters?
-path <String[]>
Specifies the path to the files to be searched. Wildcards are permitted.
The default location is the local directory.
Required? false
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input? false
Accept wildcard characters?
-recurse [<SwitchParameter>]
Gets the items in the specified path and in all child directies. This is
the default.
Required? false
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input? false
Accept wildcard characters?
-caseSensitive [<SwitchParameter>]
Makes matches case-sensitive. By default, matches are not case-sensitive.
Required? false
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input? false
Accept wildcard characters?
-context <Int32[]>
Captures the specified number of lines before and after the line with the
match. This allows you to view the match in context.
Required? false
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input? false
Accept wildcard characters?
-passThru [<SwitchParameter>]
Passes the literal MatchInfo object representing the found match to the
pipeline. By default, this cmdlet does not send anything through the
object pipeline.
Required? false
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input? false
Accept wildcard characters?
-pipeOutput [<SwitchParameter>]
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.
requires -version 2
Required? false
Position? named
Default value
Accept pipeline input? false
Accept wildcard characters?