Find (Windows)

find is a shell command that searches for text in files and prints matching lines to standard output.^[1][2]

find
The ReactOS find command
Developers	Microsoft, IBM, DR, Datalight, Novell, Jim Hall, ReactOS Contributors
Initial release	March 1983; 42 years ago (1983-03)
Written in	MS-DOS: x86 assembly language FreeDOS, ReactOS: C
Operating system	MS-DOS, PC DOS, FlexOS, SISNE plus, DR DOS, ROM-DOS, FreeDOS, 4690 OS, Windows, OS/2, eComStation, ArcaOS, ReactOS
Platform	Cross-platform
Type	Command
License	MS-DOS: MIT FreeDOS, ReactOS: GPLv2+

The command is available in DOS,^[3] Digital Research FlexOS,^[4] IBM/Toshiba 4690 OS,^[5] IBM OS/2,^[6] Windows,^[7] and ReactOS.^[8] On MS-DOS, the command is available in versions 2 and later.^[9] DR DOS 6.0^[10] and Datalight ROM-DOS^[11] include an implementation of the find command. The FreeDOS version was developed by Jim Hall and is licensed under the GPL.^[12]

Notably, the same-named Unix-based command performs an entirely different function – searching the file system for matching files. This functionality is provided by the forfiles command in an environment with the command of this article. The Unix-based grep command provides a function similar to the command of this article.^[13]

Use

The command syntax can be described as:

find [/v] [/c] [/n] [/i] "TEXT" [PATH...]

"TEXT"

Text to find. Must be enclosed in quotes. Notably, matching does not support wildcard characters.^[14]

PATH

File system path to a file. If none specified, the command searches the text from standard input.

/v

Display lines not containing the text.

/c

Display only the count of matching lines.

/n

Display line numbers with matching lines.

/i

Ignore the case of characters when searching.

Examples

The following command searches file "Foo" for lines that contain "Important" and prints results to standard output.

C:\>find "Important" Foo

See also

• List of DOS commands
• Regular expression – Sequence of characters that forms a search pattern