Defined as a “Windows GUI grep utility,” AstroGrep is a search tool, similar to the “grep” tool in Linux, but with a Graphical User Interface (GUI, i.e. a window, not a command line). It’s faster and more reliable, in my experience, than the built-in Windows file search features. It can show search results in context within a file. Best of all, it lets you use Perl-compatible regular expressions. If you don’t know what a regular expression is, don’t worry about it; it’s still a handy tool. If you do, go celebrate, because this is wonderful.
I wrote AstroGrep and I must say, a GUI doesn’t make an application more reliable or faster, exactly the opposite usually. A GUI just makes the app easier to use and understand.
Hi Ted,
I agree absolutely about GUIs, reliability, and speed. I meant that AstroGrep seems to be more reliable and faster than the Windows native file search features, for whatever reasons. That is, if I do a search from Windows Explorer for, say, files ending in .txt and containing the phrase “hello world” in a given folder, the number of hits I get depends not on the actual number of files fitting my conditions but on the mood Windows is in; I have literally seen some searches, if run more than once, result in different (and flatly incorrect) results an hour or so apart. Not so with AstroGrep.
I just noticed that I am using an old version; I’m about to upgrade, now. Thanks for a wonderful tool.
-Ed
Hi. This is really interesting post. Thank You! I have just subscribed to Your rss!
Best regards