See also:

• Computers: Software: Editors  (60)
• Computers: Software: Information Retrieval  (102)

• Advanced Find and Replace - Search local documents with AltaVista-like queries and replace entire paragraphs. Win32 graphical shareware.
• Agent Ransack - Freeware graphical file searching that supports regular expressions for Windows.
• AGREP, an approximate GREP - Powerful tool for fast approximate fuzzy text searching files for strings, regular expressions. User-definable records. Open Source for OS/2, DOS, Win3.x and Win95/NT.
• AGREP for VMS - A Unix "grep" program with approximate matching capabilities, ported to VMS by J.Lauret.
• Ask Jeeves Desktop Search - Indexes contents of a desktop machine and allows searching via software interface. [Windows]
• AstroGrep v2.0 - Free Windows GUI File Searching (grep) utility that supports regular expressions, versatile printing options, stores most recent used paths and has a "context" feature.
• Ava Find - Find any file on the computer including mp3 files, programs on the Start Menu, in under a second.
• Copernic Desktop Search - Indexes contents of a desktop machine and allows searching via a search box built into the taskbar. Results displayed in client window. [Windows]
• Deductus - Fast search tool, search local disks, network, CDs, and ZIPs with case sensitive searching. [Windows 95/98/NT/2000/ME]
• DivlocSoft - Actual Search and Replace is an easy to use utility to search and replace across multiple files. For the found files, it shows lines containing highlighted searched words and phrases.
• Ecrew Developers - Perform a search of files in your local network or on a single computer. Select a number of parameters including file masks, searching strings, file attributes and size, and dates. (Win 95/98/Me/NT/2000)
• Effective File Search - Search any files on your computer or local network with this effective shareware tool for Windows XP/2000/9X/NT. Windows Explorer functionality and many useful features for small business.
• Eluent Software - A collection of utilities including Eluent Replace, an interactive, multi-file search and replace program that uses Perl regular expressions and scripting, and Eluent Find, a file contents searcher and viewer. [Win 95/98/ME/NT4/2000]
• Enterprise Search - Search engine software for indexing and searching local file systems, web sites, and Intranets.
• Examine32 - Text search utility for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP, supports zip archives and regular expressions. Shareware from Aquila Software.
• File Locator - Find any file on the computer including MP3s files, movies, documents, and applications. Free trial version available for download. [Windows]
• File Substring Replacement Utility - Search and/or replace multiple substrings in multiple files. Windows shareware from Gammadyne Software.
• Filehunter Software - Developer of shareware programs to search and locate files. Featured products are FindReplaceExcel, Zipsearch, and Filehunter. Product specifications, screenshots, and downloads.
• Files Search Assistant - Search quick and efficient within text documents by using different file formats. Custom search options, generate reports, print or save to file.
• Find Duplicates - A free tool to search for duplicate files in Windows.
• Finders Keepers - Search files by exact match, grep, approximate, and sound-alike, built in or customizable viewers, replace text with backups, index files for quick retrieval. Windows 95/98/NT trial download.
• FindFile ActiveX Component - An ActiveX component that facilitates searching a directory or a set of subdirectories for the oldest or most recent file based on its creation or modification date.
• FindFiles - Replacement for the Windows XP search facility. Feature including multiple files renames, replace strings, and find multiple strings, preview pictures, text documents and movies with built in movie player (using windows media player).
• FindInFilesX ActiveX Component - Instantly add sophisticated text searching (Grep) to your programs. Search MSWord and/or text documents. Great demo source code provided, by SoftInterface, Inc.
• Google Desktop Search - Utility that indexes files on desktop PC and displays results in a Google search page, with some relevance ranking based on modified dates. [Windows]
• Hurricane Software Inc. - WinGREP, real time search/replace, find unlimited files across multiple directories. Extended IDE configuration, history management, enhanced file mask management. Results pane displays results in context. Provides, company information, FAQs and download area.
• KRAS Labs - StrongSearch, Windows utility for searching files on local area network (LAN). Filter by file size, and time. Export search results in HTML, XML file format.
• LanSpider - Full-featured shareware network file-searching utility. Advanced search options helps to pinpoint the exact patterns of the wanted file, by Reymax Software.
• NavSearch Offline Search Engine - Scans local or network drives or CD-ROM, using Netscape / MSIE, performs full text search on files, supports boolean operators. No winsock.dll required. English and French interface. Windows 16 or 32 bit shareware.
• Nihuo Software - Cool Find is a powerful file search tool for Windows. Support Drag, Drop and Copy of files, even including those in ZIP file. With string search in files, including Unicode files and Microsoft Office files. Requirements: Internet Explorer 5.0 or better and Win 9x/NT/2000/Me.
• PowerGREP - Tool for searching groups of files, with regular expression and replace facility.
• Search and Replace for Windows 95/98/NT 3x - Shareware utility for search and replace in multiple files, directories and zip archives. Supports egrep style regular expressions. Script language for webmasters and programmers. From Funduc Software.
• SearchWin - Searches for file names or file context in Windows using multiple search terms that can be related with And/Or/Not. Find files without using ancient DOS filename or wildcard parameters. Print search results or save search results to text or comma delimited file.
• Sgrep - Structured grep is a tool for searching and indexing text, SGML, XML and HTML files and filtering text streams using structural criteria. Win32 binary and binaries for HP-UX, Linux, OSF1 and Solaris.
• Simple Search/Replace Software - A free replacement for the Windows "containing text" option found in their search window. Search plain-ASCII text files, such as source code, HTML, RTF and batch files. However it can also search binary files such as word processor documents, databases, spreadsheets and executables.
• Wilbur - Indexes drives, files, CDs, and zip archives, accepts wildcards, OLE and command line integration, GPL for Win32 from RedTree Development.
• Windows Grep - Graphical text search and replace tool for Win32, shareware.
• Yahoo! Desktop Search - Indexes files on desktop machine and allows searching via software interface. Results not ranked by relevance, but it uses reductive queries that means the list of results narrows as you add additional keywords. [Windows]
• ZipScan - Shareware archive search utility for Windows, that looks inside archive files. The program can search Zip, CAB, RAR and JAR files, including self-extracting archives.

• Arstechnica.com - Review of five Windows desktop search programs, covering what is indexed, mechanism used for search, how search results are displayed (interface quality) and how they are ranked for relevancy (if at all). (April 4, 2005)