In computing, find is a command in the command line interpreters (shells) of DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows. Computing is usually defined like the activity of using and developing Computer technology Computer hardware and software. In Computing, a command is a directive to a computer program acting as an interpreter of some kind in order to perform a specific task In computing a shell is a piece of software that provides an interface for users DOS, short for "Disk Operating System" is a shorthand term for several closely related Operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market OS/2 is a computer Operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively Microsoft Windows is a series of Software Operating systems and Graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. It is used to search for a specific text string in a file or files. The command sends the specified lines the standard ouput device.

It is equivalent to the Unix command grep. Unix (officially trademarked as UNIX, sometimes also written as Unix with Small caps) is a computer grep is a command line text search utility originally written for Unix. The Unix command find performs an entirely different function. The find program is a directory search utility on Unix-like platforms

Overview

The find command is filter to find lines in the input data stream that contain or don't contain a specified string and send these to the output data stream. A filter is a computer program to process a Data stream. Some Operating systems such as Unix are rich with filter programs

Syntax

FIND [/V] [/C] [/N] [/I] "string" [[drive:][path]filename[. . . ]]

Arguments:

• "string" This command-line argument specifies the text string to find. In computer Command line interfaces a command line argument is an argument sent to a program being called
• [drive:][path]filename Specifies a file or files to search.

Flags:

• /V Displays all lines NOT containing the specified string.
• /C Displays only the count of lines containing the string.
• /N Displays line numbers with the displayed lines.
• /I Ignores the case of characters when searching for the string.

Note: If a pathname is not specified, FIND searches the text typed at the prompt or piped from another command.

Example

find "keyword" < inputfilename > outputfilename

See also

• Regular expression
• Wildcard character
• List of DOS commands

References

• Microsoft TechNet Find article