find and grep

So remember my new toy – the command line? Well, I didn’t just drop it after a few days.

I don’t know about anyone else, but the Search Tool in Windows XP really bugs me. I’m not just talking about that stupid dog wagging its tail all the time (OK, I’m a cat person, so maybe I’m biased) – I’m talking about how the results always seem a bit odd, and never really tell me what I want.

Sometimes I want to know all files in a folder tree with ‘Widget’ as part of their name. Sometimes I want to know all files in a folder tree with ‘Widget’ as part of their content.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present you with find and grep. Simply put your Cygwin prompt into the directory you want to start at, and:

• find . -name '*Widget*' – searches file names
• grep -r Widget * – searches file content

Simple, clean, fast, effective. And no dumb tail wagging noises coming out of my speaker.