Re: [h-e-w] Searching on Windows (find, grep, and indexed search)

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

Scott Jaderholm wrote:
> Hi Emacs users,
>
> First of all, thanks to everyone who's helped to make EmacsW32 a very
> nice distribution.
>
> I'm looking for a simple, interactive way to do four basic types of
> searches from within Emacs on Windows.

You can do this just as you do it when you use Emacs on GNU/Linux since 
EmacsW32 comes with the needed programs (from Gnuwin32).

> Search:
> 1 - directory for file named "string"

Just to answer you I tried it (I am actually not using find-dired myself):

  M-x find-dired
  Run find in directory: YOUR-DIR
  Run find (with args): -name YOUR-FILE

It worked for me - so I learned something ;-)

> 2 - directory for file containing "string"

Try lgrep or rgrep:

  M-x lgrep
  Search for (default "bla"): YOUR-STRING

I use this very often.

> 3 - file for lines containing "string"

   M-x occur

> 4 - and replace all occurrences of "string" in files in directory

There is a lot of way to do it. Without installing any additional 
packages you can use find-dired (or find-name-dired) to get a dired 
buffer. In that buffer you can mark all the files with 'm' files you 
want to replace in and then use 'Q' to start a search and replace.

For other alternatives see

 http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/emacs-en?CategorySearchAndReplace

> > From the results buffer I would like to be able to press a keystroke
> and go directly to the file and in #2 and #3 go to the line. Showing
> file details in #1 would be nice.
>
> I think that find-dired will do #1, but I get a long list of file not
> found errors on what appear to be parameters. I think it is
> find-ls-option that I need to set but I don't know what to set it to.

I did not change find-ls-option.

> I notice that EmacsW32 comes with find and grep in C:\Program
> Files\Emacs\EmacsW32\gnuwin32\bin. Do I just need to add that
> directory to my path or do I also need to change some variables?

They are already in the path that Emacs uses internally.

> I'm running Emacs 22.0.95.1.
>
> I also think find-grep-dired will do #2, but again I get a bunch of
> file not found errors on parameters.
>
> How can #3 be done without opening the file first?

You can use

   M-x lgrep

and give the exact file name.

> #4 can probably be done with dired, but it probably requires working
> find and grep like the above. If there's a better way than dired to do
> this I'd love to know.
>
> Additionally, has anyone been able to link search in Emacs into some
> cached local search engine like Windows search index?
>
> Thanks,
> Scott