grep Alternatives
grep is described as 'command-line utility for searching plain-text data sets for lines matching a regular expression' and is a File Search utility in the file management category. There are more than 25 alternatives to grep for a variety of platforms, including Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD and PortableApps.com. The best alternative is DocFetcher, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like grep are Agent Ransack, grepWin, dnGREP and AstroGrep.
grep alternatives are mainly File Search Utilities but may also be Web Log Analyzers or Text Editors. Filter by these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of grep.DocFetcher is a portable German/English open source desktop search application. It allows you search the contents of documents on your computer. - You can think of it as Google for your local document repository.
- Freemium • Proprietary
- Windows
Agent Ransack is a tool for finding files and information on your hard drive fast and efficiently. When searching the contents of files Agent Ransack also displays the text found. Users can then quickly browse the results without having to separately open each file!
- Free • Open Source
- Windows
- PortableApps.com
grepWin is a simple search and replace tool which can use PCRE regular expressions to search for strings of text within files. grepWin adds an entry to the shell context menu to easily search selected folders.
- Free • Open Source
- Windows
dnGrep allows you to search across files with easy-to-read results. Search through text files, Word documents, PDFs, and archives using text, regular expression, XPath, and phonetic queries.
- Free • Open Source
- Windows
AstroGrep is A Microsoft Windows GUI File Searching (grep) utility. Features include regular expressions, versatile printing options, stores most recent used paths and has a "context" feature which is very nice for looking at source code.
ripgrep is a command line search tool that combines the usability of The Silver Searcher (an ack clone) with the raw speed of GNU grep.
regexxer is a nifty GUI search/replace tool featuring Perl-style regular expressions. If you need project-wide substitution and you’re tired of hacking sed command lines together, then you should definitely give it a try.
Silver Searcher is a code search tool similar to ack that claims to be much faster. It's implemented in C and has some extra features such as ignoring files per .hignore, .gitignore contents.
No screenshots yet- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Linux
Ack is designed as a standalone (one perl file) replacement for 99% of the uses of grep. ack is intelligent about the files it searches. It knows about certain file types, based on both the extension on the file and, in some cases, the contents of the file.
ack vs grep opinions
DesertShadowSO much simpler. Sane, modern, defaults.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
FAR is a simple tool for search and replace operations over multiple files. You can apply ordinary "word by word" replacement, or choose to use fully featured regular expressions.