Overview

Fsgrep is a simple Java application which allows a user to search all files in a directory structure for lines matching a given pattern. Its basic functionality is a combination of the Unix 'find' and 'grep' utilities. Its power is that is allows use of regular expressions in the search pattern, and it also has a multiple-file search and replace functionality.

Fsgrep is licensed under the GNU GPL V2 . For more information on the GNU GPL & free software , please visit wwww.gnu.org .

Fsgrep was initially designed as a tool for programmers. It solves the problem searching for strings/patterns in source code files (java, c, sql, etc.), which are distributed in a multi-level directory structure. However its usefulness extends beyond the just realm of programming because it is a useful tool for seaching any kind of text file (e.g. html, txt, etc.).

Fsgrep is still being developed. The release version is stable, and new features are being implemented. It runs as a command line tool and also is a powerful graphical application. Project information is available at the (SourceForge) project page . More information is available in the FAQ .

Features

  • Platform independent.
  • Quickly search a directory tree for all files with a given suffix.
  • Search individual files using regular expressions (based on the native Java java.util.regex package).
  • Perform search-and-replace in multiple files.
  • Runs as a command line utility. (See the usage .)
  • Rich graphical interface (screenshots ).
  • Search for files by filename using patterns.
  • Searches multiple jar/zip files and searches entries by pattern.

Download

Follow the link on the lefthand sidebar on this page to download the latest version of fsgrep.

Additionally, you will need the Java 2 Runtime Environment (v1.5 or better) to run Fsgrep. To download a free copy of the latest Java 2 Runtime Environment, visit Sun's Java site at java.sun.com .

Install

Once you have downloaded Fsgrep, and assuming you have installed Java, no further installation is necessary. To start Fsgrep, simple invoke:

     java -jar fsgrep-3.0.2.jar

(Depending on how your environment is set up, you may have to type the absolute path to the java executable. For example: "c:\Program Files\JavaSoft\JRE\1.5\bin\java.exe" -jar fsgrep-3.0.2.jar .)

For convenience, start scripts can be used to execute Fsgrep. Examples are shown here .

If you are upgrading to a newer release of Fsgrep, just replace the old jar file with the new jar file. You may want to save it to your file system simply as fsgrep.jar , to make upgrading simpler.

Uninstall

To "uninstall" Fsgrep:

  • Remove fsgrep-3.0.2.jar from your system.
  • The program creates the directory .fsgrep in your user home directory (on Windows, this is usually something like C:\Documents and Settings\username\.fsgrep .) Remove this directory.
  • If you created start scripts, then remove those too.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to JetBrains for supplying an open-source license for IntelliJ (possibly the best Java IDE).

The last version compatible with JDK1.4 is fsgrep2.1.0.jar .