Find Text in Disk Files

The Find Text in Disk Files command provides the ability to search for a text string across a specified range of drives, directories and files. Lines which contain the desired string are presented in a results window, and the file containing a match can be opened by pressing Enter or double clicking on the line.

Regular Expressions can be used when specifying the search string, and one or more file patterns can be used to search within an entire class of files.

The results window is non-modal, so you can peruse the files opened and later return to the window to open other files, without losing the search results. The results window has a Copy All button which allows its results to be copied to the current clipboard. The Copy Selected button will copy only those lines that have been selected. The Open All button will automatically open all files in which matching lines were found.

A wide range of options are provided to control how the search is conducted, and what drives, directories and files should be searched:

This drop-down list allows you to specify the disk drive to be searched. When the Search all drives and directories checkbox is selected, this list is disabled.

This drop-down list allows you to specify the directory to be searched. When the Search all drives and directories checkbox is selected, this list is disabled. Note that a double-click is required to select a directory; a single-click will not suffice.

Use the folder icon with the red square in it to jump to the directory of the current file.

This edit box allows you to specify the filename and/or file pattern(s) to search within. A list of common file patterns has been supplied in the drop-down list, or you can type your own. When specifying multiple patterns, separate the patterns with a semi-colon (;) and do not use intervening spaces.

The file patterns that appear in the drop-down list are shared with the File Open dialog. The file patterns which appear in this dialog are user-definable via the Configure | Preferences | File I/O options page.

Regardless of whether or not such files match the supplied filename(s) or file pattern(s), binary files will not be searched by this command.

This edit box is used to specify the text string to be found. Regular Expressions can used if desired. The associated drop-down list can be used to recall previous search strings.

The Delete key can be used while the drop-down list is displayed to delete the selected entry from the history list.

Special characters can be entered into the Text to search for edit box using the technique described in the Help topic Inserting Special Characters.

Ordinarily, the Tab key is used to move from field to field within a dialog box. If you would prefer that the Tab key insert a tab character in this dialog box, and in other Find/Replace related dialog boxes, check the relevant box on the Configure | Preferences | Tabs dialog page.

If this box is checked the history list will be maintained in alphabetic order, rather than in the order the strings were entered.

When switching to an alphabetically sorted list, the chronological ordering of the list will be lost, and cannot be restored by unchecking the checkbox.

If this option is selected all drives and subdirectories will be searched, except that removable drives may be exempted using the option below.

If this option is selected drives with removable media (such as floppy drives and mass storage cartridges) will not be searched.

If this option is selected all subdirectories below the selected directory will also be searched.

If this option is selected, files whose Hidden attribute bit is set will be considered during the search. The Hidden attribute causes a file to become invisible to many directory listing programs, and is often used together with the System file attribute.

If this option is selected, files whose System attribute bit is set will be considered during the search. The System attribute is sometimes used by the operating system to distinguish files which should not be altered or deleted.

If this option is selected, files whose Archive attribute bit is set will be considered during the search. The Archive attribute is used by the operating system to flag those files which have been changed since the previous backup operation. Backup programs will typically reset a file's Archive bit after saving the file to a backup device. In most cases you will want to leave this checkbox active to ensure that recently changed files will be searched.

Use this option to stop the search after a specified number of matches have been found.

Use this option to search a file set which has been designated in the disk, directory and file controls at the left side of the dialog.

Use this option to restrict the search to those files that are currently open for editing.

Use this option to limit the scope of the Find operation to those files within the active project.

If this box is checked, wildcard characters within the search string will be interpreted according to the Perl-Compatible Regular Expression (PCRE) convention. In part, this means that the asterisk (*) will cause a match of zero or more occurrences of the preceding character. The period (.) will match any single character. For more information, see Regular Expressions.

When using pattern matching characters, there can sometimes be more than one text string that matches the search string. This option can be used to request that the longest possible matching string be returned.

This option can be used to force the search string to be matched exactly. When unchecked, a case insensitive search is performed.

This option can be used to restrict matches to those strings which appear as a whole word. The characters which serve to delimit words are user-configurable; see Configure | Preferences | Cursor Travel.

This option can be used to force the search string to be matched only when a matching string appears at the start of a line. This effect can also be achieved with a Regular Expression.

This option can be used to force the search string to be matched only when a matching string appears at the end of a line. This effect can also be achieved with a Regular Expression.

If this option is selected, the text of the matching lines will be shown in the results window, grouped by file.

If this option is selected, the filenames in which matching lines occurred will be reported, but the matching lines will not be shown..

If this option is selected, the filenames in which matching lines do not appear will be reported..

If this option is selected, line numbers will be displayed to the left of each matching line.

If this option is selected, the count of matches found in each file will be shown in the results window.

If this option is selected, divider bars will be used within the results window to separate one file's matches from another.