Suggestion: Find in Files from command line

Alan Kilborn

Well, in theory we could put together all we know and create the desired functionality via scripting…if it isn’t picked up natively. There’d be a lot of individual pieces, but I can’t think of anything that would be a “stopper”.

Ekopalypse

@Alan-Kilborn

Yes, that (usually) always works :-D

Alan Kilborn

@Ekopalypse

And some of the pieces are:

invoke new instance of N++ with new parameters on the command line
command line pickoff of parameters (@Ekopalypse has showed us how to do this in the past)
invoking of the Find in Files dialog after N++ startup
filling in the fields on Find in Files with command line data
starting the Find in Files running

So, okay, only 4 basic steps, but some of those steps have a lot of “meat” to them.

I don’t know that I have sufficient interest in the base topic to work up a script, but the script-writer in me thinks that writing it would be more fun than using it would be useful. :-)

artie-finkelstein

YAREST (Yet Another Regular Expression Search Tool)

I use grepWin from Stefans Tools.

It’s FOSS, it’s also available in the PortableApps.com platform, it uses Boost (or plain text) for searching, it can be easily configured to invoke Npp at the desired found line [ grepWin :: Settings > Editor ]:

C:\programs\Notepad++\notepad++.exe -n%line% "%path%"

it works well as a Run menu command:

<Command name="grepWin" Ctrl="no" Alt="no" Shift="no" Key="0">grepWin /searchpath:&quot;$(CURRENT_DIRECTORY)&quot; /filemask:&quot;*.*&quot;</Command>

and I find it nicely bridges the CL/GUI divide. It took a very small amount of work (a batch file wrapper) to make it assume folder and file extension defaults as I prefer them for regular CL invocations. [But sometimes I’ll still fire up GnuWin32 grep (for one thing it’s less to type <grin>)]

Alan Kilborn

@artie-finkelstein said in Suggestion: Find in Files from command line:

grepWin…it uses Boost

That it uses Boost’s regex engine is a bit obscure – it doesn’t seem to advertise that – is a definite plus for N++ users that are used to it for searching.

artie-finkelstein

@Alan-Kilborn
I don’t think the author considers it a major selling point; to many people RE is RE, right up until they get bitten by the flavor differences.

The author states on the mini help page on his website:
grepWin uses the boost regex engine to do its work, with the Perl Regular Expression Syntax.

The F1 help screen in grepWin has links to the top-level (non version specific) Boost documentation (which as of today has ‘release’ resolving to ‘1_77_0’):

https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/release/libs/regex/doc/html/boost_regex/syntax/perl_syntax.html
https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/release/libs/regex/doc/html/boost_regex/syntax/character_classes.html

The project source code on github for the current version (2.08) shows it using Boost 1.76.0.0.

I have not tried any form of “proof of Boostness” as I typically use grepWin for searches similar to: “Which files in this project reference a particular manifest constant?” or “Have I defined this word in another text file in this folder tree?”

It does offer a replace function, which works well with plain text replacements. I have only tried regex replacements a couple of times (it worked fine). By default, grepWin saves a copy of the original file with a .bak extension added for both replacement styles.

Alan Kilborn

@artie-finkelstein said in Suggestion: Find in Files from command line:

to many people RE is RE, right up until they get bitten by the flavor differences.

You said that very well. :-)

grepWin uses the boost regex engine to do its work, with the Perl Regular Expression Syntax

I’m not really sure what that means (the last part).
I’ve also seen other related references calling it PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expression) syntax.
To me, it’s “Boost RE syntax”.

artie-finkelstein

@Alan-Kilborn
Nolo contendere.

I think my opening statement (BTW: I thought you’d like it) also covers the authors conflation of different RE namings.

Nick Knight

Coming in late, but I was searching for a way to do something similar “from the command line”.

I have a utility that greps through DB-based data. It lists hits, and if a user chooses one, write the corresponding content to a temp file and opens it up in Notepad++. However, to FIND data from that point, the use has to open the find dialog and type in the text again and press go.

I’d love to find a way to pre-search, JUST the file opened from the command line, for a specific text string. Have the matching strings already found, highlighted and the cursor on the first match.

Catrin Brooks

Filelocator Lite, which is now known as AgentRansack, is what I’m using. Npp is great, however there is a flaw that can force me to delete it.

WinterSilence

you can do it without notepad https://stackoverflow.com/a/20999154/12517370

Victorel Petrovich

I’d like to use such a feature so that I can integrate with a browser extension that can ask Notepad++ to open the given html file (at rightclick or icon in toolbar) and edit it.
Having the feature discussed here would allow me to first select a piece of text, then have Notepad open the html exactly where that is.

PeterJones

@Victorel-Petrovich ,

If your browser extension knows the line number of the selected text, then you could use the -n command line option to tell Notepad++ which line to scroll to. You don’t need to be able to “find in files” from the command line to implement that behavior.

—
update: @artie-finkelstein actually pointed out -n in September 2021, though you may not have waded through enough of the posts to notice it, nor maybe understood the implication that it could solve your problem easier than “find-in-files-from-command-line”.

Mark Olson

I like dnGrep, but tbh I use my own gorpy more often than I probably should

Victorel Petrovich

@PeterJones
Ah, no, that browser extension “External Application Launcher” (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/external-application-laun/bifmfjgpgndemajpeeoiopbeilbaifdo?hl=en-US ) can’t know the line number. I can’t know it myself either.

The workflow would be I select a piece of text in the html page in browser, then trigger than extension to command N++ to search the selected text and open at the right place , for me to edit it.

mkupper

@Vitaliy-Dovgan said in Suggestion: Find in Files from command line:

Notepad++ already has a very powerful Find in Files functionality (Ctrl+Shift+F).
… (snipped) …
If it looks like a good suggestion, let’s discuss the design here. E.g. what exact names to use for the command arguments, what exact behavior to expect from Notepad++, what other options we may want to set, etc.

Based on the number of people chiming in with “I use ... from the command line” it appears they don’t see the finder built into Notepad as the best available.

I myself have been using plain old findstr that is built into Windows but often use it in batch file wrappers that end up feeding the results into Notepad++ much like what the proposed -ff style command line options would do.