[dalani]

I often need to find files on my two disks (mostly text). I use KDE's Kind which is quite good. But I need something that will let me use booleans in searching text content and display the search results with cut/pastable previews (Word processor on my old mac se30 sys7.1 had this feature). Would KRegExpEditor allow me to do this? It is not installed in my box so I need to know before dwnloading it. or is there a utility that will do this?

[Squashman]

I am confused on what operating system you are using?

Could you give me an example of what you would like to find and how you think you can find it.

[dalani]

Well for starters I am using Linux MDK10.0. Like I said in my post, I sometimes need to find a text file somewhere in my directories with a keyword search. I know that grep does this quite well but I use Kfind which is quicker. Ideally if grep had a front end gui where I could input the text string 'foobar' and get an output in a window with line occurences/file path etc...
When i read the KDE help docs it referred to KRegExpEditor that would allow this function. But it not installed in my box and I'm not sure if that is the right tool..
any help would be appreciated

[jakoval]

Are you sure it's not installed? Looks like it should be part of kde.
Here's the developer's page:
http://www.blackie.dk/KDE/KRegExpEditor/

Here's another tool that might do what you want:
http://rexgrep.tripod.com/rexgrepmain.htm
(Beware - popups galore it's a Tripod page)

[Squashman]

I guess I am still confused on what you want. Do you want to look for text within a file or just a filename? Grep is great for finding text within in a file. That is all I ever use. There are lots of options with it as well.

I did a google search for grep gui and found a couple of frontends for grep.

[dalani]

Yes rexgrep is what I was looking for to find text within a file. I dwnloaded it but am confused by the steps required to install it.
1 the README text file says to "./configure then make install etc.. with a list of required gtk files etc.. following the instructions gave a list of errors of missing cc files bla bla bla

at that point I was trying to remind myself again why i put linux in my box?! sorry for being off topic. But to reiterate, I want to be able search text in files even binary *.doc pdf and openoffice files.

By all means do send the links to those gui grep frontends. Kde's KRegExpEditor webpage doesn't have a download section. I will look in the rpm site for the Mandrake 10.0 ..586.. rpm package. But if too difficult to install, I might as well cut and paste the console recipe: grep foobar etc... can I bookmark such a command in my bash console? If so what's the grep switch for dumping the results in the console window rather than a text file?

thnks

[dalani]

Ok I download the KRegExpEditor from
http://rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/se...&system=&arch=
installed it with Mandrake's package rpm installer...

I activated kfind menu and sure enough KRegExpEditor is integrated into the content search tab. But search results in filepath names only not first line content
so I guess i'll use grep.
thanks again

My advice to any linux programmers out there: console computing went out in the 1970s. An end user has no time to compile softs and chase down dozens of missing files...

[Squashman]

Originally Posted by dalani

My advice to any linux programmers out there: console computing went out in the 1970s. An end user has no time to compile softs and chase down dozens of missing files...

I beg to differ. Console computing has many uses and is still used today. A shell prompt is the most powerful thing in the World. Just ask any Hacker or SysAdmin.

But I understand your frustration with a search utility that is a little easier to use. Linux on the desktop is still evolving. Microsoft and Apple had a 15 year head start and Linux is catching up pretty quickly.

[dalani]

Originally Posted by LwdSquashman

I beg to differ. Console computing has many uses and is still used today. A shell prompt is the most powerful thing in the World. Just ask any Hacker or SysAdmin.

But I understand your frustration with a search utility that is a little easier to use. Linux on the desktop is still evolving. Microsoft and Apple had a 15 year head start and Linux is catching up pretty quickly.

There you get it. I use Win2000 at work and I use Linux at home for the web. I find search/indexing on the 2000 so useful and was pleased to know unix had grep and slocate all along. I bookmark the console recipes now which is almost as fast as a menu.

BTW I used from your previous post
fgrep -i -r -u 'foobar' /mnt/foo/* > found.txt

I checked manual pages for grep but no switch works for searchinf binary. The -u and -w when used dumps the entire binary file instead of the first lines of occurence.