Searching for files that DONT contain a certain string

durbs · 24 Mar 2007 at 21:14

Hi, i need to search a large amount of text files (aspx.vb) for all files that DONT contain a certain text string. All the tools i've got only seem to be able to search for all instances of a certain string (normally use the excellent Textpad for this sort of thing).

Anyone know a tool that i can point at a directory and it'll tell me all files of a certain type that dont contain the word 'Apples' for example?

Ta

M0KUJ1N · 25 Mar 2007 at 12:17

Dont know about doze but on *nix you would use "grep -v". I'd imagine that the required effect could be achieved simply by using a negation operator in the regular expression you are using for your search. Both vbs and javascript both have reg exp support IIRC.

bledd · 25 Mar 2007 at 12:35

findstr

its commandline based, instructions for it here

http://www.ss64.com/nt/findstr.html

edit

find

that's is what you want, not findstr

http://www.ss64.com/nt/find.html

/V : Display all lines NOT containing the specified string.

durbs · 25 Mar 2007 at 23:21

Ta bledd, thought initially that would be no good as i read the line 'Search for a text string in a file' and seeing as theres 300+ files to search against i didnt fancy the hassle of scripting it to loop through them all. Turns out it can indeed scan a directory though so that'll do the trick!

Andreas_UKF · 9 Dec 2009 at 09:48

many features of regular expression syntax I find there
www.easyfileeditor.com/Regular-Expression-Syntax.aspx

Also on that site you can find the program (Easy File Editor) that easy edit one or more files using Regex !!!To me, as to the system administrator, very comfortably to work with long LOG files(for example -find,replace,highlight,separate text)