Content
Regular Expression File Search
Overview
Refs is a small utility programmed in C# and .NET which allows you to use regular expressions to search your computer for a file or directory. It serves somewhat as a Windows-native version of Linux's grep tool, though it is a tad less advanced than grep.
Refs allows you to search a specified directory (if a -d argument is supplied) or just the working directory for file and folder names containing any given regular expression. A simple search might be: refs -d ".\Pictures\Photos\" "(png|jp(e|)g)", which would list all of the png, jpg or jpeg files in your photos directory. A screenshot of sample output is to the right.
You can log Refs' results in two ways: either by piping its output to a file using the > command (in Windows), or by using the -l switch (possibly in conjunction with -q) to output a full and verbose debug log of the search. For full documentation of Refs' abilities, please see the refs -h command.
Download
You can download Refs here: Refs.zip (x86). It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
The archive contains Refslib, which is required for Refs to execute. The zip archive contains an install.bat file, which will copy Refs and Refslib to the C:\Windows\ directory, so you can run it from a command line with any working directory. The zip archive also contains Refs' source code. Since it is uses .NET, Refs may not be easy to port to different systems, however, I've had some success getting it to work with Mono. As always, your mileage may vary.
