Grep Tool For Mac

Posted : admin On 11.04.2020

Vampset setting tool User-friendly and free of charge VAMPSET software has been designed for setting parameters and configuring relays and is suitable for the entire VAMP range of protection relays, VAMP 321 arc flash protection unit and measuring and monitoring units. Vamp tool for mac. Vamp Software VAMPSET setting and configuration tool User-friendly and free of charge VAMPSET software has been designed for setting parameters and configuring relays and is suitable for the entire VAMP range of protection relays. Find Vamp software downloads at CNET Download.com, the most comprehensive source for safe, trusted, and spyware-free downloads on the Web. Tools & Utilities. Best Video Software for the Mac. Welcome to our McCAD home page. Is the publisher of McCAD E.D.S software, a complete family of integrated electronic designs systems for MS Windows and Macintosh OS platforms. Browse products from Schneider Electric - WW in VAMPSET for Vamp Software - VAMPSET setting and configuration tool. Welcome to the Schneider Electric corporate Website. Charge VAMPSET software has been designed for setting parameters and configuring relays and is suitable for the entire VAMP range of protection relays.

  1. Grep Tool For Windows
  2. Free Grep Tool For Windows

This is a good basic GREP graphical user interface. I'm using it on Mac OS X 10.8.3 (Mountain Lion). One aspect that I found better than other GREP GUIs that I have tried, is that you can copy the results. Popular Alternatives to PowerGREP for Mac. Explore 12 Mac apps like PowerGREP, all suggested and ranked by the AlternativeTo user community. MacOS (Mac OS X) comes with the BSD (Berkeley Standard Distribution) version of command line tools which are slightly different from the Linux version (in Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, CoreOS, etc.) even though both are compliant with POSIX standards. Mgrep is a command line tool that allows users to search text files for lines matching a given regular expression. It is similar to the well-known Unix utility, grep.As a natural extension to the single-line regular expressions, mgrep is also capable of searching for multiline patterns. Windows Grep is a tool for searching files for text strings that you specify. The program combines the power and flexibility of traditional command line grep utilities available on DOS, UNIX and other platforms with the ease of use of Microsoft Windows. Windows Grep is an advanced searh tool that improves the default Windows search function with reporting support. Although Windows and many other programs have file searching capabilities built-in, none can match the power and versatility of Windows. An application providing superior performance for loading and searching through large text files Interpret text documents in any encoding supported by Mac OS.

It's fast, it's powerful, and its very name suggests that it does something technical: grep. With this workhorse of the command line, you can quickly find text hidden in your files. Understanding grep is the first step in joining the guild of command-line wizards.

Why Not Use the Finder?

It's easy to find files with the Finder when you know their names. But the grep command is a time-saver when you're trying to find what's inside files. You can use grep easily from the command line to search for specific text, and you'll get results in seconds. (You can also use grep within certain text editors.)

The Finder offers a similar function: the Find By Content search. (Press Command-F in the Finder, select Content in the Search For Items Whose pop-up menu, and enter a search string in the text field.) But the Finder searches only inside files it has indexed, and it ignores hidden system files unless you expressly choose to search for visible and invisible files and add your System folder to the search.

The Finder also lacks grep's flexibility: while it's good for searching for a specific word (for example, Walden ), it becomes less useful when you want to find a longer string. Search for Walden Pond, and it returns all files that contain either Walden or Pond.

Using grep also gives you access to regular expressions. These combinations of letters, numbers, wild cards, and other special characters let you find much more than mere words. You can search for just about any string of characters: IP addresses in log files; phone numbers in contact lists; or specific strings containing a series of numbers, letters, or other characters. Using regular expressions, you're limited only by your imagination.

Get a Grip on Grep

The grep command looks inside one or several files for the string, or text, you specify. Its syntax is: grep options search_string file...

At its most basic, you tell grep what to look for and where: grep AppleTalk /etc/services, for example. Here, you tell grep to look for AppleTalk in the services file located in the /etc directory. (This useful file contains a list of network port numbers for commonly used services.) The command displays each line that contains your search string:

Grep Tool For Windows

And so on. You can use the familiar asterisk (*) wild card to have grep search a group of files in the current working directory, as in grep Walden *. This command searches all the files in the current directory for the word Walden, returning the following:

And so on. As the above example shows, the search returns several matches. The first, Walden.doc, is a Word file. The grep command calls such proprietary file types binary files. It can't display the contents of binary files, but it can search inside them and tell you if something matches. The next examples come from plain-text files, for which grep can display the results. You see the file name, followed by a match of the search string in its context.

You can search for any multiword text string by enclosing the string in single quotes. For example, if you want to search for the phrase Walden Pond,you'd type grep 'Walden Pond' *.

Note that grep doesn't like Macintosh line breaks. It returns lines containing the search string, but it doesn't see Mac line breaks as anything other than characters. In such a case, the “line” it returns is the entire file; this can dump a lot of text into your Terminal window.

In the previous example, grep ran in a specific folder, checking all the files it contained. What if you want to run grep on a folder and its subfolders, or you want grep to look for the string regardless of case? You need to add options. For example, to search for Waldenanywhere in a folder or its subfolders, use the-r(recursive) option: grep -r Walden ~/Documents/*.

Fine-Tune Your Searches

To Find…Use This OptionExample
Text in subfolders-rgrep -r Walden ~/Documents/*
Finds Walden in any file in any subfolder of ~/Documents.
Whole words only-wgrep -w live
Finds only live ; does not find liver , lives , lived , and so on.
Case-insensitive text-igrep -i pond
Finds pond , POND , or Pond .
File names only-lgrep -l Walden
Finds files containing Walden , but returns only a list of file names.
Number of occurrences only-cgrep -c Walden
Returns the names of files containing Walden and the number of hits in each file.

The grep command has several options that let you fine-tune the way you search for text, as well as the kind of results grep returns. Get started with the helpful options listed here. (Note that you can also combine options—for instance, grep -rl Walden searches subfolders and returns only a list of files containing the word Walden .)

Search for Multiple Strings

Using the pipe (), a Unix redirection operator, you can tell grep to search for more than one string. Say you want to find files containing both Walden and Pondon the same line. You'd use this command: grep Walden * grep Pond. The first part of the command looks for the word Walden in any files in the current directory, and the second runs another grep command on the results of the first command. Terminal displays only the final results of the two commands combined.

You could string together many grep commands, like this:

. This command looks in a special dictionary file for words containing the lowercase letter a. It then looks for words containing e in the results, and so on, finally returning only those words that contain all five vowels.

This function of grep is most useful when you're searching for specific strings in output from other commands. In this way you can whittle down long and complex output. For example, here's a common way to find the process ID of a program that's stuck so you can force-quit it from the command line: type ps -ax grep Finder.

This command first gets a list of all processes running on your Mac, and then sifts through this list looking for lines containing the word Finder. For example, your results might be as follows:

The process ID is the first number on each line; here, the Finder is 390. (You'll notice the command also returns itself; since the word Finderis in the grep command, that gets listed as well.) So if the Finder is stuck, this gives you the information you need to force-quit it. Now you would type the command (where the process ID is the final argument) kill -9 390.

Add Regular Expressions to the Mix

While you have seen some of the power of the grep command, you can go much further using regular expressions, special combinations of characters that act as wild cards. Here are a few examples.

If you're not sure how to spell the word separate, for example (is that an a or an e?), run this command to check the special dictionary file hidden in your Mac's entrails:

You'll get back a list of words that includes separate, separately, separately, separateness, and separates.

Note the two special characters in the command: the caret (^) and the dot (.). The caret tells grep to search for the string at the beginning of a line, so the results don't include words like inseparate. The dot matches any character except a new line.

What if you want to find all the phone numbers in a specific file? Try this command, which will find phone numbers in the 555-1234 format:

.

Each of the[0-9] wild cards matches any character in the range specified in brackets. You can use ranges such as[1-3] to limit your search to specific strings. This works for letters, too:[a-n] matches any lowercase character from a to n.You can build your own range with sets of characters—for example, [aeiou] will match only vowels. You can learn more about regular expressions by typingman grep in Terminal, or by consulting Jeffrey Friedl's excellent book Mastering Regular Expressions, second edition (O'Reilly, 2002). With a bit of practice, you'll be using grep and regular expressions to find anything you want.

Kirk McElhearn is the author of The Mac OS X Command Line: Unix Under the Hood (Sybex, 2004). His blog, Kirkville, has articles and tips on using the command line with Mac OS X. ]

Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.


Click to viewWhen you need something done quickly, efficiently, and without any software overhead, the command line is where it's at. It was the first way humans told computers what to do, but as graphics became increasingly important, the command line, or terminal, became an insiders' secret weapon. But with the right commands and a little bit of know-how, anyone can get things done from a text-only interface. Let's take a look at 10 commands and tricks that make the terminal more accessible, and more powerful, on any system. Photo by blakepost.


Note: Mac OS X and Linux users have robust command line interfaces baked right into their systems. To get to them, head to Applications->Utilities->Terminal in Finder. It varies in Linux, depending on your distro and interface, but a 'terminal' can usually be found in an 'Accessories' or 'Utilities' menu panel. Windows users are best served by installing and configuring Cygwin, a Unix emulator, which we've detailed in a threepartseries.

Advertisement

Geek to Live: Introduction to Cygwin, Part I

Introduction to who? If that's what you thought when you saw the title of this article, then…

Read more Read

10. Customize your prompt

Advertisement

If you're going to spend any time at the terminal, or want to start doing so, it should be a welcoming place. To go beyond green or white on black, check out this Ask Lifehacker response, in which Gina runs through a few simple ways to change the colors, and the greeting message, on your prompt for Windows, Mac, or Linux systems.

9. Force an action with sudo !! ('bang bang')

Advertisement

You already know that prefixing a command with sudo makes your system execute it with superuser privileges. But when you forget to sudo, the !! or 'bang bang' comes to the rescue. When you've perfectly crafted a long command that does exactly what you need, hit Enter, and d'oh—you don't have sufficient access privileges—you can sudo !! to repeat the last command with superuser privileges. It's the ultimate nerd triumph: 'Oh, you didn't like that command? Well, then sudo !!'

8. Create whole directory trees with mkdir

When it comes to organizing music, pictures, documents, or other media, nested folders become a necessary annoyance—as in right-clicking, choosing 'New Folder' and then naming and clicking through each of 'The Beatles->White Album->Disc 1.' It's far easier from the terminal, as the Codejacked blog points out:

mkdir The BeatlesWhite AlbumDisc 1

Some terminal users have to add a before spaces, but you get the idea. If you're a Vista user who's just not down with Cygwin, you can still pull this off with the md tool in command line.

Advertisement

7. Filter huge lists with grep

Some terminal commands spit back a bit too much information, and that's where grep comes in. Need to manually kill a faltering Thunderbird? Punch in ps aux grep bird, and you'll get back the specific number to kill. Need to know which files don't have your company name in them? grep -v DataCorp *.doc. Programmer Eric Wendelin explains grep more in-depth.

Advertisement

6. RTFM with man (and more)

Advertisement

Let's say a program, or web site, has just asked you to run a command to unlock or enable something, but you'd like to know just a little more before jumping in. Add man before the command (as in man ssh) and you'll get manual-style pages detailing how to use the command. Bit too much material to process? Try whatis for a brief description, --helpafter the command for basic usage, or any of these other command-line learning tools.

Free Grep Tool For Windows

5. Manage processes with top

Most systems have a tool to view 'tasks' or 'running programs,' but they usually hide the true guts of what your system's doing from you. The Hackszine blog points out that Mac and Linux users can harness the power of the built-in top command to track and kill runaway processes making your system unstable. There's also ps -aux for a single-screen, non-updating look at what's bugging your computer.

Advertisement

4. Master wget for powerful file-grabbing

AdvertisementEntity relationship diagram tool for mac.

The wget command has been around since before there was all that much stuff to actually yank from the net, but this extensible, multi-purpose tool has lots of great uses these days. You can mirror entire web sites locally, resume huge downloads on the flakiest of connections, download the same file every hour to keep tabs on a project, and do much, much more with wget. It's one of those elegantly simple tools that's only as powerful as your creativity.

3. Get way beyond system searching with find

Once again, programmer Eric Wendelin offers real-world examples of how powerful a command line tool like find can be in, well, finding files and directories that match the smallest criteria you can imagine. Want a list of every HTML file that references the hexidecimal color #FF0000 (red)? find can totally do that for you. As Wendelin points out, find, by itself, is about as convenient and powerful as a total-system searcher like Google Desktop or Quicksilver, but piped into and out of other tools like grep, it's a powerhouse. For a more pared-down look at some of find's powers, check out this tutorial at Debian/Ubuntu Tips & Tricks.

Advertisement

2. Set up powerful backups with rsync

Advertisement

You can spend a lot of money and time hunting down a perfect backup app that works with all your systems just the way you want. Or you can spend a few minutes learning the basics of rsync, the flexible, powerful command that makes one folder (on your system) look like another (where you back up). To put it simply, rsync is a cross-platform, completely free Time Machine, if you use it right. Luckily, Gina's already shown us how to do that.

1. See your most-used commands with history, make aliases for them

Advertisement

Once you're comfortable with the terminal and getting good use from it, you might notice some of the more useful commands require an astute memory and typo-free typing—unless you make them shorter and easier. Start off by copying and pasting this command (on one line):

history awk '{print $2}' awk 'BEGIN {FS=' '} {print $1}' sort uniq -c sort -r

It will return a ranked list of your most commonly-entered commands using your command history—and you can start creating aliases to shorten them and make them easy to remember. Or you could search through your recently-used commands with as-you-type results for quick-fire repeats.

Advertisement


While these 10 commands are generic and applicable on all systems with a Unix-like terminal, Mac OS X offers a few Mac-specific tools. Here are useful command line tricks for Mac users.

Useful Command Line Tricks for Mac Users

Click to viewThat Mac you're viewing this web page on using a pretty graphical interface?…

Read more Read

Advertisement


We love to have some CLI fun around here, and we know our savvier readers have tons of cool terminal hacks and tricks that are new to us. So, please—share the knowledge and spread the wealth in the comments.