The grep command in Linux is widely used for parsing files and searching for useful data in the outputs of different commands.
The findstr command is a Windows grep equivalent in a Windows command-line prompt (CMD).
In a Windows PowerShell the alternative for grep is the Select-String command.
Below you will find some examples of how to “grep” in Windows using these alternatives.
Grep Command in Windows
Grep the output of a netstat command for a specific port:
# Windows CMD C:\> netstat -na | findstr "PORT" # Windows PowerShell PS C:\> netstat -na | Select-String "PORT"
If a command in PowerShell returns some objects, before parsing, they should be converted to strings using the Out-String -Stream command:
# Windows PowerShell PS C:\> Get-Alias | Out-String -Stream | Select-String "curl"
Grep a file for a pattern that matches a regular expression (case insensitive):
# Windows CMD C:\> findstr /i "^SEARCH.*STRING$" file.txt # Windows PowerShell PS C:\> Select-String "^SEARCH.*STRING$" file.txt
Display help for the Windows grep command equivalents:
# Windows CMD C:\> findstr /h # Windows PowerShell PS C:\> get-help Select-String
Hi. I tried to type in the cmd prompt
` C:\> netstat -na | findstr “2020”` and enter, and it doesn’t work. I want to search in directories of word document some strings. It seems that I missed something in your explanations
What you want is this section of the article:
# Windows CMD
C:\> findstr /i “^SEARCH.*STRING$” file.txt
In the example above you can change “^SEARCH.*STRING$” to “2020”. i.e.
C:\> findstr /i “2020” *.txt
The above command will search for “2020” in all txt files in your current directory.