computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computer, computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and the development of both computer hardware, hardware and softw ...

, is a

command Command may refer to: Computing * Command (computing), a statement in a computer language * command (Unix), a Unix command * COMMAND.COM, the default operating system shell and command-line interpreter for DOS * Command key, a modifier key on A ...

in the

command-line interpreter A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user-friendly alternativ ...

s ( shells) of

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and

ReactOS ReactOS is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source operating system for i586/amd64 personal computers that is intended to be binary-code compatibility, binary-compatible with computer programs and device drivers developed for Wind ...

. It is used to search for a specific

text string In computer programming, a string is traditionally a sequence of characters, either as a literal constant or as some kind of variable. The latter may allow its elements to be mutated and the length changed, or it may be fixed (after creation). ...

computer file A computer file is a System resource, resource for recording Data (computing), data on a Computer data storage, computer storage device, primarily identified by its filename. Just as words can be written on paper, so too can data be written to a ...

Overview

The command sends the specified lines to the

standard output Standard may refer to: Symbols * Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs * Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification Norms, conventions or requirements * Standard (metrology), an object t ...

device. It is similar to the find command. However, while the find command supports

UTF-16 UTF-16 (16-bit Unicode Transformation Format) is a character encoding that supports all 1,112,064 valid code points of Unicode. The encoding is variable-length as code points are encoded with one or two ''code units''. UTF-16 arose from an earli ...

, findstr does not. On the other hand, findstr supports

regular expression A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp), sometimes referred to as rational expression, is a sequence of characters that specifies a match pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" ...

s, which find does not. The findstr program was first released as part of the

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...

Resource Kit Resource Kit is a term used by Microsoft for a set of software resources and documentation released for their software products, but which is not part of that product. Resource kits offer supplementary resources such as technical guidance, compatibi ...

under the name qgrep. findstr cannot search for null bytes commonly found in

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

computer files.Findstr - Search for strings - Windows CMD - SS64.com
/ref>

Syntax

FINDSTR flags strings rive:path]filename .. Arguments: *flags This can be any combination of flags described below. *strings Text to be searched for. * rive:path]filename Specifies a file or files to search. Flags: */B Matches pattern if at the beginning of a line. */E Matches pattern if at the end of a line. */L Uses search strings literally. */R Uses search strings as regular expressions. */S Searches for matching files in the current directory and all subdirectories. */I Specifies that the search is not to be case-sensitive. */X Prints lines that match exactly. */V Prints only lines that do not contain a match. */N Prints the line number before each line that matches. */M Prints only the filename if a file contains a match. */O Prints character offset before each matching line. */P Skip files with non-printable characters. *

/OFF INE/code> Do not skip files with offline attribute set.
*/A:attr Specifies color attribute with two hex digits. See "color /?"
*/F:file Reads file list from the specified file(/ stands for console).
*/C:string Uses specified string as a literal search string.
*/G:file Gets search strings from the specified file(/ stands for console).
*/D:dir Search a semicolon delimited list of directories

Note:
Following command displays the detailed help about this command:
  FINDSTR /?

 Example

Save your running services into file _services.txt and search in this file for lines containing word "network" - case insensitive:

  @echo off
  set searchstr=network
  net start>_services.txt  
  FINDSTR /I "%searchstr%" _services.txt
  pause

output would be: 

 Network Connections
 Network List Service
 Network Location Awareness
 Network Store Interface Service
 Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service
 Press any key to continue . . .


 See also


*Regular expression 





A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp), sometimes referred to as rational expression, is a sequence of  characters that specifies a  match pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by  string-searching algorithms for "find"  ...

*Wildcard character 



In software, a wildcard character is a kind of placeholder represented by a single character (computing), character, such as an asterisk (), which can be interpreted as a number of literal characters or an empty string. It is often used in file  ...

*List of DOS commands 

This article lists notable  commands provided by the MS-DOS disk operating system (DOS), especially as used on an IBM PC compatible computer. Other DOS variants as well as the legacy Windows shell, Command Prompt (cmd.exe), provide many of these c ...

* find
*grep 


grep is a  command-line utility for searching plaintext datasets for lines that match a regular expression. Its name comes from the  ed command g/re/p (global regular expression search and print), which has the same effect. grep was originally de ...


 References



 Further reading

*
*

 External links

findstr ,  Microsoft Docs

{{Windows commands

 Microcomputer software
 Windows administration
 Pattern matching