Finding files that contain a specific string

[yaffasoft]

Hi guys ,

I have a directory that has thousands of txt files, from that directory , i need to find a file that contains a specific string ,return the file name.

Is there a way to do that in autoit ?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[FaT3oYCG]

StringInStr ( "string", "substring" [, casesense [, occurrence [, start [, count]]]] )

help file, you can also use the help file to find information on the functions that you will need to read a list of the file names and how to create a for loop to check them.

[yaffasoft]

StringInStr ( "string", "substring" [, casesense [, occurrence [, start [, count]]]] )

help file, you can also use the help file to find information on the functions that you will need to read a list of the file names and how to create a for loop to check them.

Thanks for the fast reply , but I dont want to checks if a string contains a given substring.

What I am trying to do it to find a file that contains a specific string

[Fulano]

If you want to do an search like this it's going to have to break down like this (or something close)

1: Figure out what files to scan and pass their filenames to a function (I'd use an array of file names and loop them to a function, personally)

2: Do this to each file and store the result:

A: Read the file into a variable

B: Use the suggested StringInStr to check

C: Return something or other to let you know that file contained the word

3: Pop up some sort of dialog letting you know if it was found

The major problems/variations are going to be in part A:

You can read the whole thing in and check it all at once (Possibly faster) but will bork if you have files bigger than can fit into memory

Or

You can read each line of the file in and check each line (Possible slower)

Either way, it's totally doable, but you'll definitely want to test it on a small number of files first, because searching thousands of files is going to take quite a bit of time.

Side note: if you do this sort of thing alot, you might be better off looking into the tools that are part of the Cygwin package.

[dani]

Use a desktopsearch application capable of reading the contents of .txt files I don't think AutoIt will do it very fast, although it is capable of doing this. Just doesn't seem like an AutoIt task to me. Windows Desktop Search indexes .txt files just fine, which will give you extreme fast lookups (compared to some AutoIt script).

Or try Grep for Windows, I haven't tried it myself but this should work as well.

Edited March 5, 2010 by dani

[Fulano]

Or try Grep for Windows, I haven't tried it myself but this should work as well.

Grep is one of the utilities in the Cygwin packages, didn't know it was available separately.

Also, grep is considerably more powerful that the Windows Search, and using it will teach you regular expressions, which are invaluable when working with AutoIt

[dani]

Agreed, but Windows Search is easier to use for regular users I guess and suits him fine in this case I myself would also be in favor of Grep though. Just presenting some options

[jchd]

Low-tech way: from Scite, Ctrl Shift F done.