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I have a text (.txt) file located somewhere on my PC that contains a bunch of data, including the following string:
Secret Username: *********
Secret Password: *********
How can I find this file from command-line, using Findstr?
I don't know if it's on C: drive or D: drive.
I tried various Findstr
queries, such as:
findstr /s /m /n /i Secret Username C:
findstr /s /m /n /i Secret Username D:
findstr /s /m /n /i /c:"Secret Username"
findstr /s /m /n /r /i .*Secret Username.*
but couldn't find the file.
It finds hundreds of files (lots of Java files), but there's no way they contain this string. Is it because it doesn't look for the whole string? – amiregelz – 2012-11-18T16:32:02.890
so sorry, there was a mistake, I did an Edit ... – bummi – 2012-11-18T16:54:10.927
Do you know if it starts searching from where
cmd.exe
is located or from the path showed in command-line itself (for me it'sC:\Users\amiregelz
)? – amiregelz – 2012-11-18T17:05:50.623that's why it ends with C:*.*, you have credentials? – bummi – 2012-11-18T17:08:59.647
It doesn't find the file (I waited for more than 5 minutes) :-( Do you have any idea why? Also, please add
/M
to the query since otherwise it shows all the content of each file and it's not a good idea because the file I'm looking for contains a lot of data. – amiregelz – 2012-11-18T17:10:31.8131The /N switch already limits the output to the matching line. Furthermore, the command handles about 1 GB a minute. There's a very rough estimate, but scanning the entire C:-drive typically takes a few hours as opposed to five minutes. You can limit the search to .txt-files for a significant performance boost. I have edited the answer accordingly. – Marcks Thomas – 2012-11-18T18:05:41.780
@MarcksThomas Thanks for the info, after searching for
.txt
only it found the file after 30 seconds. – amiregelz – 2012-11-18T18:13:00.747@ Marcks Thomas thank you, sorry it didn't see (*.txt) .... – bummi – 2012-11-18T18:27:05.373
@MarcksThomas: /N prints the line number before each line that matches, whereas /M prints only the filename if a file contains a match. Since the file has to be located, /M should result in less lines of output and thus a faster search. – Karan – 2012-11-19T01:47:47.480