Find

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In computing, find is a command in the command line interpreters (shells) of DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows. It is used to search for a specific text string in a file or files. The command sends the specified lines the standard output device.

It is equivalent to the Unix command grep. The Unix command find performs an entirely different function.

Overview

The find command is filter to find lines in the input data stream that contain or don't contain a specified string and send these to the output data stream.

Syntax

FIND [/V] [/C] [/N] [/I] "string" [[drive:][path]filename[...]]

Arguments:

• "string" This command-line argument specifies the text string to find.
• [drive:][path]filename Specifies a file or files to search.

Flags:

• /V Displays all lines NOT containing the specified string.
• /C Displays only the count of lines containing the string.
• /N Displays line numbers with the displayed lines.
• /I Ignores the case of characters when searching for the string.

Note: If a pathname is not specified, FIND searches the text typed at the prompt or piped from another command.

Example

find "keyword" < inputfilename > outputfilename

See also

• Regular expression
• Wildcard character
• List of DOS commands

References

• Microsoft TechNet Find article

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