GGrep, Windows Text Search, Replace Software

GGrep is a text search and replace software for the Windows operating system that is based on the original Grep tool of Unix based machines. The portable Windows software comes with a user interface that displays the majority of features right on the start screen. A basic search requires a search term and the selection of a root folder on a connected hard drive. A click on Search parses all files and displays all files containing the search term in the results listing.

The files are displayed with their name, the row and column the phrase was found and the phrase surrounded by words before and after. One of the issues that I found was that it was not possible to scroll horizontally. The only option to display all text was to increase the window size significantly.

Filters are available to narrow down the search results. It is for instance possible to search only specific file types or folders, or to exclude files and folders from the search.

Other filters include making the search case sensitive or to limit the results to full word matches. GGrep supports regular expressions just like the original grep application. This opens up several interesting options for more powerful search and replace operations. You could for instance search for euro|dollar to find documents containing either the phrase euro or dollar.

Another interesting feature of GGrep is the option to replace text. While it is possible to use simple text to text replacements, one could use regular expressions for better text matching.

Please note that the program is not displaying a list of possible matches first. When you click Replace the replacing of text happens instantly and without option to undo the changes (other than reversing search and replace strings).

The results of a search or replace can be exported into a csv file which can then be imported into programs like Excel. Windows users who are looking for a powerful search and replace tool should take a closer look at GGrep. The software is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the operating system.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Friday September 30, 2011 -
Tags:ggrep, grep, portable software, replace, search, windows software

Responses so far:

1. nero says:

   October 1, 2011 at 11:37 am

   How do you think this stands up against TextCrawler?

   Reply
2. KRS says:

   October 1, 2011 at 3:40 pm

   What does GGrep do, at least on the Search side, that I can’t already do with the Search function in the Start menu?

   Now if it did proximity searches (e.g. Firefox w/7 update), I’d be jumping for joy.

   Reply
   • Martin Brinkmann says:

     October 1, 2011 at 4:34 pm

     Well you can use regular expressions for that.

     Reply
     • KRS says:

       October 1, 2011 at 4:39 pm

       Please let me have a link for how to do this.

       Thanks.
3. ReX says:

   October 2, 2011 at 12:00 am

   The encoding part needs to be fixed, I had some ANSI files that had letters with accents, they got deleted, along with question marks, for some reason.
   One I’ve been using for a couple years now is Actual Search & Replace (commercial), never let me down, there’s RegEx support as well.

   I’ll see how TextCrawler compares to it, thanks for the tip, nero.

   Reply
   • nero says:

     October 2, 2011 at 12:08 am

     Cool Rex,

     I’m eager to hear what you have to say :)

     Reply