Thursday, March 26, 2009

Searching Source Code


The search built into Windows XP (see screenshot) was hopeless at finding stuff in source code files it doesn't know about (.vhd for example). For example, I look in a source code folder for all files containing text I know is in multiple files and it comes back with nothing.

Reading online tells me that it tries to weed out meaningless results by not looking in file types it doesn't know about. Then there was some help online about how you could go in the registry and change information about each of the filetypes you want to be able to search in, and then maybe this search would find stuff. That sucks.

Also, there's a chance of using the command line "FIND" utility, but the output from that is horrible. Why can't I have something useful like grep? Anyhow, this prompted me to try Windows Search 4 and then Google Desktop. Both suffer the same issue as the built-in Windows search, they don't search in unknown file types. *@$!@$()!$&!

I just want a utility like grep for Windows. I guess I'll have to go hunting some more.

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